


every time

by troubledsouls



Category: Trench - Twenty One Pilots (Album), Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Trench (Album), Brainwashing, Memory Alteration, Mentions of Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-08-19 20:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 22,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16541915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troubledsouls/pseuds/troubledsouls
Summary: “the bishops are wrong.”“they’re never wrong.”“they are wrong, tyler. they’re wrong about everything.”or, even through everything that happens in dema, tyler always finds josh and jenna out in trench.





	1. flying from a fire

**Author's Note:**

> this contains a lot of my interpretations of trench and dema and vialism. it will start making some sense soon, but until then please stick with it! if you have questions, feel free to comment them! i can tell you whether or not they will be answered later, or i can answer them for you right then!
> 
> big thanks to all my writer friends who i’ve known over the years. i love you guys so much <3

all he does is eat, sleep, work, and worship. 

it’s easy to fall into that pattern, easy to do what you're told and follow the rules. he does that. everyone else does that. 

~~almost everyone else,~~ but he doesn’t think about that. 

worship is maybe the worst part, but he can't remember why. it's not that bad, really. he sits in the pews and follows the instructions, lifts his arms and stands and sits. nico has taken to him, which makes him happy in a twisted way. being liked by your bishop means things will be better for you. you might even get to speak to them personally. you might even get to become one of their chosen.

he’s sitting alone, as he always does, at mealtime, when two people sit across from him. 

“hello.” one of them says. his hair is dark brown and overgrown, eyes a lighter brown. there's a smile on his face. “saw you at worship today.”

of course the man saw him at worship today. they’re in the same district. 

“nico likes you.” the other one speaks through a mouthful of food. her hair is blond, eyes a brilliant blue. 

he doesn’t know why they’re sitting with him. nobody ever sits with him. “uh, yeah.” he says. “what are your names?”

“walter.” the man pushes his dark hair back from where it falls in his eyes. he's still smiling. 

“madison.” she swallows her food and doesn’t hesitate to take another bite. “you?”

“franklin.” it feels strange on his tongue. he never liked the name assigned to him, but he can’t remember any other. ~~he thinks about the single yellow flower in his drawer.~~ “it’s nice to meet you guys.”

“nice to meet you too.” walter’s eyes crinkle up when he smiles. it lights up his whole face with warmth, so unlike the neon. 

“is it okay if we sit with you from now on? you seemed lonely.” madison’s smile does the exact same thing to her face. 

he nods, and goes back to his food. 

the days go by uneventfully, walter and madison sitting with him at mealtime and sometimes during worship. ~~he knew them before dema.~~ he doesn’t see them much outside of those times. he doesn’t know anything about them. at the very least, he knows that they’re in nico’s district. the few times they pass by each other in the streets, they don’t acknowledge each other. 

tentatively, he could call them his friends. 

he has no idea what he looks like to them. there are no mirrors in dema, and he doesn’t dare look at his reflection for fear of what he might find. ~~he doesn’t know why he’s afraid.~~

walter tells him that his eyes are brown, and he knows his hair is dark brown when it comes off on his brush. there are black marks on his skin that he sees whenever he gets dressed. 

~~why does he think they never see each other outside of mealtime and worship? he talks to madison and walter all the time.~~

~~he and walter made plans to ł &ѳ%г\8€ƃ£çæ~~

~~they’d made it ou{ፈ$~ѫ#šΩ%ę~~

~~walter had wanted to be cal/ጀ@д3¥\\]ф^~~

“no need to be so nervous speaking to me, franklin.”

the deep voice of nico enters his scrambled brain. it calms down his heartrate ~~somehow, even though he knows it shouldn’t~~.

“wh… what?” he’s confused. he was thinking about-

“something bad happened, franklin, and i’m sorry.”

why does his neck hurt?

 ~~he resists flinching when~~ nico rests a hand on his shoulder. 

“you’re okay now, i promise. you can head back to your room.”

he nods. 

nico removes his hand. 

he bows, then turns away and steps through the empty doorframe. he wanders down the hall, down a flight of stairs, and out into the center of the city. 

there's nine cylindrical towers arranged in a square. they reach high, up above the other buildings. the places where the bishops live. the places where people are punished. 

he makes his way back into nico’s district, back to his room. he doesn’t know how he gets there, what with how disoriented he feels. something feels like it was pulled out from his brain, but he has no idea what. 

when he enters his room, the vials greet him with their plain white glow. 

he collapses into his cot and goes to sleep. 

the next day comes with a knock on his door signaling it’s time for worship. he doesn’t bother to change his clothes, just gets up and heads out. he doesn’t want to be late. 

he picks out madison in the seats and sits next to her. she doesn’t look at him. 

it takes him until mealtime to realize that walter is gone. he wasn’t at worship either. 

madison sits next to him instead of across. he’s about to ask her what happened when she puts a single finger to her lips for half a second. 

they eat in silence.

near the end of the designated time, madison presses a crumpled piece of paper into his hand. her voice is barely a murmur. “don't read it until you’re alone.”

he shoves it into his pocket. 

work feels like it takes forever. he folds clothes as they’re handed to him and places them into bins, so they can be given to the next person to wear them. nobody owns anything in dema. 

dorothy works beside him, as she always has, but this time gives him a couple strange looks. he has no idea what they mean. he doesn't ignore her, he can’t, but he tries to put his mind away from what she might be thinking. wondering about other people hinders you. 

neon lights his way back to his room. he passes madison but doesn’t look at her. she doesn’t look at him either. 

he sits on his cot and digs into the pocket where he put the paper. it’s still there, to his relief. 

he barely smoothes it out before devouring the handwritten words. 

_it’s walter. we left the city. if you got pulled back again, like you told us happened last time, madison’s gonna give this to you._

_wake up. you need to remember. you need to understand what’s going on._

_my name is josh. hers is jenna. yours is tyler._

_east is up._

his hand shakes as he reaches into his other pocket. 

there's a crushed yellow flower.


	2. inside the glass, they form my brain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are beginning to move now.

mealtime the next day brings madison, and the ability to ask questions. 

“i don't understand.”

madison looks at him, the same weird look that dorothy gave him the day before. “what’s not to understand?”

“the paper.” he drops his voice lower. it’s not like he could be heard over other people’s talk, but he takes the precaution. “walter.”

“you were with nico a couple days ago.” madison seems to ignore what he just said. “did he say anything interesting?”

“um, just that something bad happened, and that i was okay now.”

“so he didn’t tell you?” madison contemplates him as she chews. “walter’s in the necropolis now. i thought he would’ve told you.”

a chill runs down his spine. “ah.” at least he got his answer. 

“yeah. some banditos broke in. you know what the bishops say happens to people who cross paths with them.”

another shiver. “yes. i know.”

they spend the rest of mealtime in silence. 

he doesn't think about walter at work, just lets his brain go blank. it’s more efficient to immerse yourself in what you do, anyways. it’s better not to think. 

once he gets back to his room, he allows himself to cry. 

how could walter die? nothing bad had happened, at least that he remembered. maybe the bad thing that nico had talked about was walter’s death. 

~~if walter was in the necropolis, why wasn’t he invited to walter’s ceremony? they were closer than most.~~

it didn’t matter. walter was in the necropolis. all that mattered was his vials. it didn't matter how he got there. 

he made himself stop crying, and wiped at his tears. no use crying for the dead. they would be honored. 

it feels strange to go about the next few days without walter. he’d known the man for ~~so many years~~ a month, at most. but he hadn’t known him before that month, so it would be easy to fall back into routine. 

and it is, for a time. he eats meals with madison. dorothy stops looking at him strangely. he goes to worship. he does what he’s told. 

“franklin.” dorothy murmurs. it’s been fifteen days since walter’s death. 

he looks over at her. she makes eye contact. 

“east is up.”

he doesn't know how to respond. it takes him a second. “east is up.” he decides to echo. he doesn’t understand what it means. their district is to the west, and isn’t north supposed to be the top of maps?

she adjusts her glasses and sweeps her long, dark hair back over her shoulders. “i’ll be replaced tomorrow. don’t say anything about me if they ask.”

he’s confused. “i won’t.”

dorothy nods. “if you think of me ever again, my name is erin.”

erin. he ties that name to her face. he swears to himself to never forget it. 

she turns back to her work, and he turns back to his. 

the next day, true to her word, there’s someone else working next to him. he doesn’t learn her name. she doesn’t tell him, just works and never looks at him. 

he repeats erin’s chosen name one more time in his head, then stops thinking about her. when people go missing, it’s best not to worry unless you know them well. they’re usually in the necropolis, anyway. 

nico doesn’t talk to him personally again, just gives him glances during worship. he doesn’t know if they’re good or bad. he does what is instructed no matter whether he’s being watched or not. he is a good citizen. 

the days become mindless. he sits with madison, but they don’t speak anymore. he works (he knows her name is jill now. he doesn't see her at worship. she says she’s from andre. he doesn’t understand why she works with him). he eats at mealtime. he sleeps. he doesn’t dream. 

when he doesn’t sleep, ~~when the light from the vials in the center of his room is too distracting to let him rest,~~ he thinks about walter. he knows he shouldn’t. he knows he should ignore the note, the things it said about names that weren’t assigned. 

~~walter’s real name is josh. he is alive.~~

that’s wrong. 

~~madison’s real name is jenna.~~

their assigned names are their real names.

~~his real name is tyler.~~

even if tyler feels more right than franklin ever did, he can’t let himself think like this. 

~~josh made it out. east is up.~~

he’s not allowed to think like that. thinking like that gets you punished. he is a good citizen. he does what he’s told. 

his neck hurts. 

~~what about the note? what about the flowers? what about the half-there memories of what’s outside?~~

he is a good citizen. 

at worship, when nico asks if there’s anyone who has been having contrary thoughts, he stands up. 

nico takes his hand and leads him down the aisle, up to the statue. neon vials light the two of them on either side. 

there’s a murmur, then a shout of “no!” 

he feels himself pulled away from nico, pulled back from the vials and the statue. he turns and sees madison, with her hands locked around his forearm, trying to drag him away. there’s something frantic in her eyes, something pleading him to not do this. 

~~he knew her, before dema.~~

it’s too late for her to stop him. 

nico breaks her grip and makes her stumble back with a gaze. she will be punished later. 

he’s lead to the statue, and nico pushes him to his knees in front of it. there’s neon in his eyes, in the buzzing in his ears. cold hands touch his neck. he stares up, up at the statue, at the vials behind it. there’s neon in his brain. 

an empty vial is placed against his forehead. 

his name is franklin. he’s been in dema his entire life. he knows nothing but vialism and the bishops and his daily routine. worship, mealtime, work, sleep. every day. every day. every day. 

he does not think about before. 

there’s nothing beyond dema. there’s nothing before dema. there’s nothing after dema. there’s nothing but dema. 

the vial is removed. it buzzes with a soft white glow. 

nico helps him to his feet and leads him back to his seat, and someone different stands up when asked if anyone else has been thinking contrary thoughts. 

he stares forward. he doesn’t look for madison. he doesn’t think about walter. he doesn’t think about ~~erin~~ dorothy. 

he is like the vials.


	3. as we will please comfortability

madison isn’t there at mealtime. 

he sits alone and eats, just like before she and walter entered his life. his movements are mechanical. 

he goes and works, and he moves the same. mechanical, repetitive. 

he goes to sleep. 

same thing, every day. he goes to worship. he eats alone. he works with jill. he sleeps. 

every day. every day. every day. 

he starts seeing madison again after a while. she looks at him more often than when he knew her, but she doesn't sit with him anymore. 

maybe that’s for the best. after all, something strange happened with her when he was being cleansed. 

he is a good citizen. he does not want nico to suspect otherwise

the cycle continues, day after day after day after day. he gets restless, sometimes, fingers twitching with the need to do something. he’s never sure what to do with himself in those moments, and it builds up inside him bit by bit. 

once, by accident, he sits next to madison at a worship. nico gives him a look that is definitely negative. he doesn’t look at her, doesn’t acknowledge her, just does as instructed and prays. 

she moves out of turn halfway through and touches him lightly on his left hand. he tenses up, and she moves her hand away. he can feel nico’s gaze tearing into him. 

he takes care not to sit next to her anymore.

after that, everything is the same. worship, eat, work, sleep. worship, eat, work, sleep. every day. 

the repetition finally ends in the middle of sleeptime. 

he wakes up to nico standing over him, silhouetted by neon. 

“hello, franklin.”

he sits up and rubs his eyes. he can’t remember if a bishop has ever visited someone in their room before. 

“you’ve been very good. i’ve been considering you for something special. why don’t you take a walk with me?”

he stands up. nico takes his hand. 

they walk through the darkened streets. he focuses on the red of nico’s cloak, the only real color in dema. 

he’s lead out of the district, to the glorious vista. it feels wrong to step over the limits, but nico himself is leading him, so he can’t possibly get in trouble. 

across the glorious vista is the necropolis. the dirt is lit up by hundreds and hundreds of vials, over a thousand gravestones surrounding the city. their buzz worms its way into his ears, makes itself at home in his brain. 

“you understand vialism, right franklin?” nico steps into the necropolis, and he must follow. the grip on his hand is vice-like. 

“i think so.” he does to some degree. 

nico tilts his head. “maybe you need a refresher.” there’s a change in his voice. “the neon is pure. it’s us, distilled down to what we are.”

“we are all vials?”

“yes, but not every vial is a person.” nico leads him farther and farther west. there’s so many graves. “some of us contain more than others. we must preserve what we contain, but some aspects have to be… removed, so that you can be productive here in dema.”

they stop walking. the two of them are lit by neon. 

by people. 

nico’s voice is hollow. “do you know how much you contain, tyler?”

~~tyler is his name. he is tyler.~~

“no.”

“nothing.”

an empty vial is pressed to his forehead. 

~~walter is Ɣ0ȼ#*Ж( &Ξ!]~~

~~madison is <₦$ש@Ꮧ`{/א~~

~~he is щ &ፚ*]\Ꮰ%€Ꮭ5Ᏸ/$Ꮙ~~

he wakes up in his cot to a knock at the door, signifying that it’s time for worship. 

he gets up, not bothering to change his clothes. he walks down the stairs and out of his building. he lets himself be carried along in the crowd to the worship building, a cylinder in the center of his district. 

there’s pews that all face the statue, placed in neat rows. vials light the room, like they light everything in dema. 

not all vials are people. 

he knows everything about vialism. 

everyone should be like the buzzing neon, like they truly are on the inside. 

he goes through the motions of prayer, immerses his mind in them. there’s nothing else in his mind, except for the vials. 

he sits alone at mealtime. it's the only time they eat during the day. he stares at the table, his mind still at worship, his mind still praying. 

at work, too, he is still thinking about neon. his brain is the buzzing of it, as he methodically folds clothing. his eyes won't focus, but he knows he’s doing his task well. there’s neon in his ears. 

after work, he slips through the crowd and makes it to his room. it’s well lit with neon, always neon, vials that buzz and glow. 

his room is a single room. only families don’t sleep alone, and those are few and far between. there’s only a cot, a set of drawers, and the vials in his room. 

all but one of the drawers are empty, and that one just contains clothes he has yet to wear. he swears another has something in it, a flash of color and flower petals, but when he looks again he sees nothing. 

he lies down on his cot. the buzzing of the vials puts him to sleep. 

the next day, same routine. 

the next day, same routine. 

the next day, same routine. 

the next day, someone is missing at worship. 

he knows the amount of people in the room so well that one less is jarring. 

~~it’s madison. madison is missing. he used to know her.~~

he sits in the front, which is unusual for him, but his head is swimming and he just wants to drown himself in prayer and neon. he doesn’t want to think. not thinking is easy. not thinking makes him a good citizen. 

the rest of the day is the same. almost the same actions, almost the same movements, similar enough to be the same but different enough to notice. 

he prays to the vials that nico doesn’t notice. 

in his room again at the end of the day, he checks the strange drawer. he’s been doing it every day. he doesn’t know why. there’s nothing in there. 

this time, he can see the two yellow flowers. 

he gets into his cot and shuts his eyes, but he can't sleep. ~~the vials are too loud, too bright. it’s not natural to sleep with this much white light.~~

the door creaks open, and he sits up. 

there’s a man standing in the doorway, dressed in green and camouflage, with yellow stripes across his chest and left knee. his dark brown hair is shaved short, his lighter brown eyes seem almost gold in the light from the vials. 

he pulls the yellow bandanna down and grins. it lights up his face with warmth. 

the man speaks quietly. “hey. it’s me. i’m here to get you out of here.”

there’s silence between them for a long moment. 

the man's smile almost falls. “come on. we have to go. i can’t stay long.”

he finds his voice. “i don’t know who you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he's Alive


	4. we’ll win but

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> banditos are my frens

he’s dragged to his feet by the stranger. there’s something frantic in his voice. “we have to go.”

“i have to stay.”

his protest is ignored. 

the stranger drags him down the stairs. he knows that he could resist a lot more than he is, knows that he could scream and yell and fight back, but part of him doesn’t want to do that. he doesn’t know why. 

it takes until they get into the street for him to realize something else, and when he does he breaks away from the stranger. 

“you’re a bandito.”

the stranger stops walking and turns around. “yes.”

“i…” his breath catches in his throat. “i can’t go with you, you’re a bandito, you’ll…”

“i won’t hurt you.” the stranger stretches out a hand. 

“but the bishops say-“

“the bishops are wrong.”

“they’re never wrong.”

“they are wrong, tyler. they’re wrong about everything.”

tyler. ~~that’s his name.~~

“i don’t understand.”

“it's me. it’s josh. it’s walter. we need to get out of here right now.”

the words come to him like something out of a dream. “east is up.” he tries to question other things, like how could the bishops ever be wrong, but the words die before they even reach his vocal chords. 

josh nods and smiles. “east is up. come on.”

he takes josh’s hand. 

they skirt around the edge of the center towers. he stares up fearfully at them, scared a bishop will come out and smear them even though there are no windows. josh doesn’t look anywhere but east. 

they navigate through keons to get east. he looks up and sees a face in a window for just a moment, before whoever it is pulls back. 

going across the glorious vista is the worst part. every part of his brain is screaming at him to not continue forward, to go back, to not go outside the limits. 

josh takes him forward. 

josh takes him east, into the necropolis. 

neon is in his ears, his eyes, it’s on his tongue, it’s everything he can feel. he doesn’t know if he’s moving. he doesn’t know what's happening. he’s not sure if he wants to know. 

eventually, the light and the buzzing fade. he has no idea how much time has passed. 

he's being carried, and when he looks up he sees josh. then he sees blue sky. then he sees bright, yellow light. 

“you okay?” josh’s voice is soft. “you scared me back there.”

he doesn’t respond. he doesn’t know if he can. he still tastes neon. 

“we’re almost there.” josh says. 

he lets his eyes close and his head rest against josh’s arm. 

the sleep he gets is the best that he can remember ever having. 

he wakes up to mostly darkness. there’s light filtering in through an opening in the cloth that covers him. it takes a moment for him to register that he’s in a tent, that for the first time he can remember he's waking up somewhere that’s not dema. 

he’s still waking up alone. 

pushing open the flap of the tent reveals several people sitting around a campfire. they’re talking, an occasional laugh ringing out through the air. it sets him at ease, and he crawls out of the tent after a few moments. 

“tyler! hi!” josh beams and waves at him. “you’re up!”

he waves back. he doesn’t have his voice, not quite yet. 

“sit here.” josh gestures to the ground next to him. 

he sits, looking around at the group. there's seven people, not counting himself. their attention is all on him, and he feels self-conscious. 

two of them are familiar, but he doesn’t know why. 

“okay, let’s all introduce ourselves.” josh glances around at the group. “this is tyler! you’ve heard about him.”

“oh, yeah, i knew him!” the person who speaks smiles at him. “we worked together. i’m erin! just in case you forgot.”

erin. her name clicks into place. how could he have forgotten? he’d promised himself he wouldn’t forget. 

the person next to her speaks. “i’m ella. welcome to trench!” she smiles at him. her eyes are kind, and her blond hair is mostly contained inside a beanie. “i would say it’s cool out here, but it’s actually pretty warm.”

this earns her a look from the next person over. “are you serious?”

ella laughs. “you love me.”

“i do.” she turns to him. “i’m mars, by the way.” her hair is also blond, and it frames her face. “it’s always good to have people join us.”

the woman next to josh leans forward and speaks. “you know me. it’s jenna.” 

he does know her. jenna. 

“oh man, i feel like i’m missing out on the knowing from dema.” the person who speaks can’t be more than seventeen. his blond hair is shaved short, and there's a scar through it on the left side. “i’m vax, by the way.”

“you knew me in dema!” the person next to him looks just a bit older. their hair is dark brown, a similar length to his own but a lot messier.

“but you’re, like, one person.” vax ruffles their hair. 

they laugh and bat his hand away. “i contain multitudes.”

“what does that even mean?”

he takes a moment to watch the two of them bicker, then blinks and looks over at josh. “is this how it is here?”

“most of the time.” josh smiles. 

everyone seems to smile easily and freely. it’s strange. nobody really smiles in dema. 

but this isn't dema. 

vax and the other person suddenly break apart from their friendly scuffle. “wait! i never introduced myself! i’m bee. vax, did you say your name?”

“yes, i did.”

“tyler, don’t worry, they’re always like that.” mars says. she must’ve been watching his face. “you get used to it.”

“the three of us aren’t any better.” erin adds. “or, well, any bandito with any other bandito.”

“we’re all one big family!” ella wraps her arms around the shoulders of mars and erin and pulls them closer to her. “it's very cute and very gross.”

“i'm glad you all got out okay.” he doesn’t know what else to say. everyone is so… happy. light. warm. 

he didn’t know dema was cold until he was out here. 

“what’s trench?” he asks to the air. 

“it's here.” ella picks up on his words, and gestures to their surroundings as she speaks. “out here, outside dema. it’s the land where dema is, technically, but dema is a separate thing.”

“i don't understand.”

“hold on.” ella moves over in front of him and draws a large circle in the dirt. “so, let’s say that inside this circle in trench. and that this-“ she draws a small circle in the center of the large one. “-is dema.”

he nods.

“even though dema is inside trench, it isn't trench. like how i am inside my clothes, but i am not my clothes.” she wipes away the circles and moves back to her spot. 

“that… makes sense.” he says. what she said is still processing in his brain, but he mostly understands it. 

he’s not in dema anymore. he's in trench. 

“ella’s really good at this stuff.” mars smiles at ella. she blushes in return and waves off the compliment. 

“it’s a bit less comfortable out here.” jenna moves over to sit next to him as she speaks. “but we’re a lot more free. camping becomes less fun over time, but we have each other to keep things light and new.”

“plus, i’ve camped in weirder places than the top of a cliff.” ella says. 

he doesn’t know when she would’ve had the chance, but he doesn’t comment on it. 

vax has been watching him with a strange intensity, and he leans towards him before speaking. “jenna said you were cleansed. were you? what was it like for you?

mars whips her head around. “vax! that’s rude!”

“i just want to know!”

“that still doesn’t mean you should ask!”

“it would explain some things!”

he doesn’t want them to fight, but he doesn’t know what to say. he doesn’t know what being cleansed means. 

“guys.” jenna speaks quietly, but they fall silent when she does. “yes, he was cleansed.”

he starts to speak. “what does that-”

“shh!” erin cuts him off, looking around quickly. 

there’s the sound of something approaching. 

“bishop.” erin whispers. 

mars, erin, and ella pull their bandannas up over their faces. so do josh and jenna. vax and bee flip up their hoods and hunch over. 

he doesn’t realize he’s dressed like the rest of them until josh pulls up his hood for him. 

he starts to look around, but josh stops him with a whispered “don’t move.”

in the dark air there's only the sound of the crackling fire and the approaching sounds. they stop for a moment, and are then replaced by footsteps. 

he can feel his heart racing. he feels frozen, stuck, eyes staring forwards. 

there’s neon in his ears. 

a hand grabs his hood, pulling it off his head and dragging him along with it. 

his body is dragged over rocks. he cant move, cant fight it. his ears buzz. 

~~he watches as the camp fades into thᏠ@:Ꮑጀ2Ꮗç <૨¥+Ꭶ~~

~~they don’t even turn to #ԹɎ{€ł=ֆ\\)ፚ$ѫ/Ꮎ~~

~~he doesn’t wa &Ꮭ5Ᏸ/>Ꮧ£૮^¤};ש!~~

~~wha¥ᙣ|Ꮦ[•7ฬ$)æ£%~~

~~Δ!}’Ŧ@щ &ፚ8€ƃ£ç]ƭ=\€*ץ+~~

~~|Ꮼ[•7ฬ#ש•}/;Ꮭ5Ᏸ/$Ꮙ >¥\\]ф?\ย[~ц?•|Д~~

~~]Ꮥ~Ꭾ¥Ꮰ <ʇ|Ꮄ^Ꮍ{Թ7ฬ$૨¥+Ꭶ)æ£пɎ{€ł=₦$ש@!~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know what it says behind the garbage text :3


	5. even more when they

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ever since i wrote this, i've been excited to post it.
> 
> here's where the mentions of suicide comes in, so stay safe <3

he comes back into awareness slowly. nico is standing in front of him, holding a vial. it buzzes with neon. 

“there we go.” nico’s voice sinks into his skin. “that’s much better, isn’t it?”

he doesn’t understand. he can’t speak. he can’t move. he can only breathe and stare up at nico. 

“you’re safe now.” 

his neck hurts. 

“how do you feel?”

he can’t find the words. the last two days are a gaping void in his mind, and he’s struggling to step through it. 

“franklin, please, it’s very important that you tell me how you feel.” nico reaches out and cups a hand to the side of his face. ~~he doesn’t flinch.~~ “i can’t help you if i never know if there’s anything wrong.”

“i’m okay.” he manages after a long moment. “but confused. cold.” nico’s skin is freezing. 

“everything should sort itself out in a few hours.” nico drops his hand. “is there anything in your head that you don’t understand?”

his response is automatic. “east is up.”

nico’s controlled calm wavers for a second. “now, where would you hear something like that?”

“i don’t know.” ~~he’s suddenly very, very scared.~~

“well, try and put it out of your mind. and if anyone says that to you, tell me, alright?”

he nods. 

“it’s late. head back to your room. i’ll see you tomorrow at worship.”

he turns, head still spinning, and leaves nico’s tower. 

walking the streets, he can tell everyone else is asleep. at one point, he swears he can see a figure duck into an alleyway. ~~he doesn’t follow them. after all, it could be someone trying to escape.~~

his room is on the second floor of his building. he manages to get there without making too much noise. he only bothers to take his shoes off before collapsing into his cot and sleeping as soon as his head hits the pillow. 

his eyes open to a screen, audio tracks staring out at him. his wrist hurts, and he realizes he’d fallen asleep holding up his head. 

there’s a keyboard off to one side, various other instruments and microphones scattered around the soundproofed space, and a computer monitor lighting up the room. 

he looks at the time on it. 4:27 am. 

he groans and rubs his eyes, standing up and pushing his chair in before wandering out of the room and up the stairs. 

he doesn’t know how he gets there, but he finds himself in the kitchen looking into an open fridge. scanning over the contents, he grabs a container with leftover chicken and takes it back down into the studio. 

the cold doesn’t bother him as he eats and scans tiredly over files. one stands out to him. he opens up the document and scrolls down to the bottom. 

after taking a break to rub his eyes and yawn, he starts typing. 

he blinks slowly, and then he’s sitting up in his cot to a knock on his door. 

he breathes, hard, staring wildly around him. the vials are still there in the center, lighting up the room with their white glow. 

~~what’s an audio track? what’s a studio? what was everything in that room?~~

he’d just been dreaming. dreams made up things all the time. 

it was nothing to tell nico about. 

he checks his pockets on instinct before heading out the door, and finds a crushed yellow flower. 

shaking hands place it in the drawer with the two others, and then he heads to worship. 

nico doesn’t look at him, and for once he’s grateful. he feels as though nico’s gaze would make him choke up every detail of the strange dream, every strange word that had sprung to his mind. 

he is a good citizen. he doesn’t need to worry nico. 

at the end of worship, nico speaks to them. “there’s a very important ceremony today for some of you. after mealtime, come to my tower. franklin,”

his ears buzz and drown out the other names. him. a ceremony. a very important ceremony. 

he doesn’t know anyone. he’s never known anyone well enough to attend their ceremony. 

~~walter. madison.~~

never. he’s never. no one. 

nico says something about people from other districts being there, but that’s the only thing that makes it through the neon in his ears and eyes until he’s standing by the door to nico’s tower. 

there’s eight other people from his district. he can see other groups of nine outside each of the towers. 

nico emerges from the tower and beckons the nine of them. he can see other bishops do the same. 

they all follow their bishops towards the center tower. reisdro’s tower. 

the district lines blur as they’re all led into the tower and down the stairs, the nine bishops at the front. 

he finds himself sitting next to a person with long red hair and dark brown eyes. she introduces herself as “alexa, from keons,” and he introduces himself as “franklin, from nico.” 

he distracts himself from the center of the room by talking to her as everyone settles. 

“how’s nico as a bishop?” she asks. her voice is quiet, as if she doesn’t want to be heard. 

he matches her volume. “he’s nice. to me, at least. how’s keons?”

“keons is very nice.” she runs her fingers through her hair. it seems like a nervous habit. “i don’t think he has any particular liking to me, though.”

the room hushes as the nine bishops turn towards them. the pews are arranged in a circle, looking down on the center. 

he feels sick. 

there’s two bodies lying there, both bloodied and still. dead eyes stare upwards. he tries not to focus on their self-inflicted wounds. 

nico speaks. “shawn, from vetomo, and lillian, from reisdro, took their own lives yesterday.”

~~why is this ceremony so public?~~

he watches as the bishops begin the ceremony. he can’t tear his eyes away as they shape the gravestones, as vetomo and reisdro fill each one with neon from each of the bodies. 

he barely remembers to breathe. 

at some point, alexa takes his hand. it grounds him, and helps him keep from vomiting all over the floor. 

~~he knew her, befo~~ he’s never seen her before in his life what is he thinking. 

the ceremony ends with vetomo and reisdro places the gravestones down and letting them light the room. the neon buzzes and echoes. he can taste it. 

his vision begins to tunnel. 

alexa squeezes his hand hard, and he blinks and fights to stay conscious. he can feel more than see nico’s gaze ripping into him, daring him to faint, daring him to find out what would happen if he did. 

through some miracle, he manages not to pass out. the gravestones are carried out, and the bishops exit. 

everyone else in the room stands and moves to leave, but he and alexa sit for a moment. 

“east is up.” she murmurs. 

it’s automatic, like something deeper than memory. “east is up.” he responds. 

“my real name is debby.” she helps him stand. “hopefully you can talk to me again. i can help explain things to you.” 

“what things?” 

the two of them trail at the end of the exiting crowd. 

“why that just happened. what’s going on.” she lets go of his hand as they exit the tower. “you have to figure it out. it’s important that you know.”

“why?”

she’s already gone, already heading east, back to keons. 

he goes west, returning to his district. 

along the way, a vulture stares down at him from the top of a building. he glances around and sees more, all watching him and the other people in the street. 

~~they haven’t been here before~~ they’ve always been here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> any ideas as to what's happening?


	6. now make a noise

jill, thankfully, doesn’t ask him about the ceremony. she just focuses on her work, and he focuses on his. 

she probably doesn’t ask because she didn’t know he was there, but he’s just glad she doesn’t mention anything about it. 

once he enters his building, instead of going to his room, he goes to the showers in the basement. 

he gets into one of the stalls and strips, stepping into the water. numbly, he realizes that it’s cold. it’s always been cold. everything in dema is cold and sterile. 

he gags and then bends over to vomit, body forcing up anything and everything that was in his stomach. he prays to everything but the vials and the bishops and the neon that nobody reports him, or even asks him about it. 

the freezing water flows over him, and he clenches his teeth to keep them from chattering. ~~why hadn’t he ever noticed the cold? dema is so, so cold.~~ every part of his body is screaming at him and he doesn’t know why.

he sits on the floor of the shower and cries. not big, heaving sobs, but quiet, choked ones. the tears streaming down his cheeks mix with the water. 

he knows that the amount of time that he’s spending is enough to be suspicious. he wouldn’t put it past someone in his building to report him to nico, even though that he’s been a stellar citizen for as long as he’s been in dema.

wait.

he’s always been in dema, hasn’t he?

a loud sob escapes him. he immediately covers his mouth with both hands, but it’s too late. someone had to have heard.

he quickly shuts off the water, grabbing the towel already in the stall and drying himself off fully. he dresses himself in the clothes he had just been wearing and exits the showers, dropping his wet towel into a bin. 

fear and adrenaline course through him as he ascends the stairs. he almost runs down the hall to his room, enters it, and shuts the door quietly behind him. 

his rational brain kicks in. nobody would know it was him. they’d only be able to say that they heard someone crying in the showers. there are other people in the building who would be more suspicious than him. he’s a good citizen. he’s a model citizen.

~~if he’s really that, then why does he have so many contrary thoughts?~~

he’s good. he’s good. he’s good.

he repeats that over and over in his head as he falls asleep. 

this time, he wakes up before the knock at his door. it gives him enough time to change his clothes properly. it’s not like it matters, though, because the new clothes he puts on are the same white and gray, the same style, the same as everyone else. 

the knock on his door finally comes, and he exits his room. 

he moves with the crowd of people to worship, letting his mind wander. what had debby meant by him figuring out what was going on? he knows what happens in dema. he goes through the motions every day. there’s nothing more for him to figure out. 

~~he doesn’t know what the flowers are for.~~

not important. 

~~he doesn’t know why he has no memory of anything other than the past couple of days.~~

not true. he remembers other days in dema, but they all blur together into one identical mass in his head. 

he remembers things. he knows things. he has everything figured out. he doesn’t need to listen to debby. 

~~if he wasn’t listening, why was he using her rea~~ stop it. 

a headache worms its way into his brain as he sits down for worship. when nico asks if anyone is having contrary thoughts, he almost stands up, but he doesn’t. something deep in the back of his mind, something barely thought or remembered, stops him. 

nico doesn’t look at him. nico doesn’t seem to suspect a thing. 

at mealtime, he barely eats. the pounding in his head is overwhelming, spreading across his entire skull and making him see spots. he doesn’t know if it comes from the vials or from how hard he’s trying to resist his own thoughts. maybe it’s both. 

he keeps messing up at work, keeps having to refold clothes. jill glares at him through most of it. if she weren’t from andre, she would report him. 

she can't do anything about his mistakes. that’s a small comfort. 

on the way back to his room his head spikes with pain, and he stumbles and braces himself against a wall. he breathes hard, trying hard not to make any sound. 

he has to leave dema. 

the thought burns itself across his psyche, consuming everything he ever knew to be rational. he has to leave. it’s the only way his headache will stop, the only way to truly get rid of his contrary thoughts. 

east is up. 

blindly, he turns towards the east, moving though people and exiting his district. he slips through the other districts, mingling with their crowds and hiding his true intentions. 

as soon as he’s through keons, he starts to run. 

across the glorious vista, across the necropolis, even though someone has to have noticed him, even though his consciousness tries to fade as he passes through the gravestones. 

he goes east, east, east, and then he’s crawling through a broken section of the wall and then he’s out. 

the warm air hits him immediately. he realizes he’d been shivering. 

he keeps moving east. 

the terrain is rough, rocky, but there are some stretches where he can just sprint. his body is exhausted, but he knows if he stops for a second he’ll stop forever. 

he climbs up, up, up a hill and stares out at trench. in the distance, he can see tents high on a cliff. the bandito camp. it’s maybe two miles away. 

it feels like it’ll take forever for him to reach it, as he stumbles through bushes and climbs over rocks and runs and runs and runs. the world darkens as he moves, until the only thing guiding him is the faint, distant fire. 

his clothing gets caught and tears at some points, but he can’t think about it. he just has to keep moving. 

the ascent up the cliff is the worst part. he can barely move, his limbs feel heavy, but somehow he keeps going. he just has to keep going. if he makes it, everything will be okay. 

faces turn to look at him as he reaches the edge of the camp, and then he collapses. 

“tyler!” 

he recognizes her voice. 

strong arms lift him and bring him over to the fire. it’s warm, bright, yellow. he’s maneuvered into a sitting position next to it. 

he looks up at the person who helped him. brown, kind eyes. 

walter. josh. 

“are you alright?”

he turns towards the voice. on his other side she stares at him, blond hair and blue eyes.

madison. jenna. 

“i…” his vision sparkles. “i made it here.”

“you’re safe.” that’s josh’s voice. 

josh on his right, jenna on his left. it feels so familiar, so comforting. 

he closes his eyes and rests his head on jenna’s shoulder. josh’s hand grabs his and squeezes gently. 

“take a second.” jenna says. she kisses the top of his head. “then tell us what happened.”

“okay.” he murmurs. 

“we’re glad you’re safe.” josh says. 

he nods, eyelids closing. 

fear of nico leaves his mind, and he dozes off with the two people he feels closest to in the whole of existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> left & right


	7. claw our way up their system

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh, tyler.

he wakes up between two bodies, staring up at the top of a tent. 

jenna has her arm across his torso, and josh lies facing him. both of them are still asleep. josh on the right, jenna on the left. 

warm, yellow light streams in through the tent flap. he stares at it. the thin strip of brightness reaches up his body, stopping just before hitting his face. 

he carefully moves jenna’s arm off of him and sits up, squinting as the light hits his eyes. he crawls out of the tent slowly, blinking and taking in the brightening air. 

there's a bandito sitting and tending to the dying fire. blond hair spills out of her beanie. there’s tape around her left arm and on the right ride of her jacket and around her left knee, and there’s an x on her right thigh. 

she looks up at him and smiles. “welcome back.”

it takes a moment for him to remember her name. ella. she’d explained trench to him. 

“hello.” he says. 

“it’s a beautiful sunrise.” she points east. bright yellow and orange streaks across the horizon. “they don't have this in dema.”

“they don’t have much in dema.”

she laughs. it’s a very nice sound.

he sits next to her and watches the fire. it’s burning down low as trench lights up with its own warmth. 

“what bishop were you under?” he doesn’t know if he’s supposed to ask something like that, but the question comes out anyways. 

“sacarver. he wasn’t that terrible.” she pokes at the embers with a long, wavy piece of metal. “you were under nico, yeah? ‘cause erin and josh and jenna knew you, and they were from nico.”

“yeah.” he stares out at the bright horizon. “you said welcome back.”

“do you remember the last time you were here?”

“i think i remember a bit.” he thinks hard for a second. “i remember your name. people are easier than events.”

“that makes sense.”

they sit in silence as yellow light rises in the sky and bathes the whole world. the fire burns down to just embers and ash, still faintly glowing but unnecessary in the new light. 

ella rubs her eyes and yawns before speaking. “you made it through your first night. the bishops don’t come unless it’s dark, so hopefully you’ll get a full day with us.” 

he looks over at her, confused. “you think i’ll get taken again?”

“not if we can help it.” she rubs her eyes again and blinks hard. “but josh said that nico drags you back within a few hours every time you escape.”

“oh.” he doesn’t remember. 

silence again. it doesn’t feel awkward or heavy. 

one of the tent flaps is pushed open, and he looks over to see an unfamiliar person. white hair flies messily around their face. they beam when they see him. 

“hello!” they sit on the other side of ella. 

“good morning.” ella rests her head on their shoulder. 

“i don’t know you.” he says. 

“i am grace.” they settle their head against ella’s. “you’re tyler. i’ve heard a lot about you.”

“really?”

“jenna and josh don’t ever shut up about you.”

he doesn’t understand why he’s worth talking about. 

a twig snaps, and the three of them freeze. 

grace lifts their head and looks around slowly. their eyes land on a point behind him. “what the-”

he turns around. 

nico is there, on his white horse, face almost unreadable except for the rage contained within his eyes. 

adrenaline shoots itself into his veins. 

he stands up and starts sprinting. 

bright light shows him the landscape of trench, and he doesn’t have to guess how to avoid obstacles like he had to in the dark. his body is moving, going east, and through his pulse in his ears he can hear the hoofbeats of nico’s horse. 

he’s wearing bandito clothes, camouflage and yellow. if he can just get far enough away, he can hide. if he can just keep moving, he won’t be worth bringing back. 

he has no idea how long he runs for, but he can always hear hoofbeats close behind. he doesn’t dare look back. he keeps his eyes on the horizon, he keeps running east. 

exhausted legs beg him to stop moving, to rest, but his brain pushes his body forwards. if he stops in the wrong place, he’ll be taken. he doesn’t want to go back to dema, he doesn't want to go back to the cold and the obedience and the fog in his mind. in trench, he is warm and free and his head feels clear, it feels like his memories are piecing themselves back together. he can almost remember his other escape attempts. he can almost remember before. 

he dares to look back. no sign of nico. 

when he looks back to the east, he stops running. 

dema looms on the horizon. he recognizes the west wall, the varying heights of the towers that could only be seen that way from the west side of the city. 

how…?

his train of thought is stopped by cold hands on his throat. 

“you shouldn’t have run this far.” nico’s voice seeps into his bones. 

he can’t breathe as he’s smeared, as black ink sinks into his throat. the buzzing of the neon is in his ears. it’s almost overwhelming. it is overwhelming. 

“why…?” he can barely get the question out. 

nico’s hands tighten around his throat. “you know too much.”

a vulture settles on the ground in front of his vision. it stares at him. 

he stares at dema, hopelessness rising up in his chest. “it’s a loop.”

“of course it is.”

“why?”

nico makes a sound that he can only interpret as a laugh. it scares him. bishops never laugh. 

one of nico’s hands leaves his neck, and then he gets dragged back and away by his throat. he chokes and gasps for breath, and nico makes that laughing sound again. 

“have you had anything strange happen to you lately? a dream, maybe?” nico speaks as he pulls. “and please, don’t spare any details.”

he reaches up and grabs nico’s hand, trying to pull it away. he can’t breathe. he can’t take in any air to answer. 

nico stops walking and lets up the pressure on his throat. “answer me.”

“i had a dream.” he gasps for breath. “i had a dream that i was somewhere else. i was in a… a studio… i didn’t know what was happening i swear!”

“there are vultures now.” nico’s cho ~~king him again. “yo@#u8 &/) %]£c$:&h1):@1$!a¥€]#_+•n$@27<~g+]%#=>{!,6€¥?-/<~€•~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> loops


	8. on straight chlorine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> clancy

he wakes up to a knock on his door signaling it’s time for worship. 

he doesn’t get up. 

he lies on his cot and stares at the ceiling and tries to remember how to breathe. 

his neck hurts.

feeling slowly returns to all his limbs. his chest rises and falls with each heaving breath. 

the vials glow in the center of his room, the same brightness as always. 

no one comes to get him. 

he doesn’t know how long he lies there, staring upwards and breathing. eventually, someone will notice he’s missing, whether it’s nico at worship or someone at mealtime. eventually, he will be dragged out of his room and punished. 

the fear of punishment instilled in every citizen should be enough to make him get up and go to nico and beg for forgiveness, but he still lies there. the only thing he does is blink and breathe. 

at some point he realizes he can control his arms, and he lifts his hands to rub at his eyes. it feels good to clear them, feels like the first step to getting out of his cot. 

his arms feel heavy, and he lets them drop onto the cot, next to his head. 

he finally feels equipped to start going through the remnants of his brain. everything inside is scattered everywhere, without any connecting ties. it was probably a miracle that he’d even started breathing again at all earlier. 

he takes a quick inventory of what he can remember. 

he exists. 

he is in dema, and therefore he knows everything that comes with that. 

vialism stands out clear in his mind, all of its tenets and prayers and vials. its neon buzz is overwhelming. 

he manages to sit up. 

the vials that light the city are bright. their light comes through his window, accentuating the neon already in his room. there’s barely any shadows. 

he reaches into his pocket as an afterthought, and pulls out a yellow flower. 

the small yellow petals are wilted and creased, the yellow center already beginning to fall apart. yellow, yellow, yellow. he remembers that color. it’s important. 

he can’t remember why. 

shakily, he stands up and walks over to his drawers. he pulls one open and looks inside, at the three yellow flowers already there. they look so similar to the one in his hand. 

he places the fourth flower in the drawer, then shuts it softly. 

he stumbles back to his cot, lies down, and falls into proper sleep. 

he opens his eyes in a sitting position, head down on folded arms. he blinks and lifts his head, rubbing his eyes. 

“you need to get real sleep.”

the voice belongs to a woman with blond hair and blue, blue eyes. she smiles at him before turning back to the stove, stirring a pot of boiling water. 

“busy.” his voice doesn’t feel like his own. it’s rough, quiet, rusty from not speaking enough. 

“that's no excuse.”

a timer goes off, and with a press of a button she stops the loud beeps. she lifts the pot off the stove and pours the contents into a colander in the sink. 

pasta. she’s making mac n cheese. 

“sometimes that’s just how it is.” he rubs his eyes again, letting his vision sparkle. “i’ve been stuck.”

“it might help to talk it over with me, if it’s a concept thing. if it’s a music thing, call josh.”

josh. he doesn’t remember the last time he spoke to josh through anything other than texts. 

“there’s something in the world that isn’t working right.” he watches her movements as his vision unfocuses, as his mind retreats into the world he has constructed. “but i have no idea what. it isn't all fitting together the way i want it to. i think i’m missing something, but i have no idea what. ”

“tell me about all the elements then. maybe i’ll be able to pick it out.”

“okay.” he rubs his eyes once more in preparation of speech, and when he pulls his hands away from his face he’s staring up at the ceiling of his room in dema. 

there’s a lot less light coming in from the outside, so it must be sleeptime. he can’t hear anything from the rooms beside his, but they must be sleeping. everyone sleeps at the same time. 

why was he dreaming like that? dreams in dema consisted of grays and reds, of the city that was all they knew, but he’d been somewhere that wasn’t dema, in a place full of color and warm light. 

who was that woman? who was josh?

he doesn’t think he’ll find the answers inside of his own brain. 

he tries to go back to sleep so that his body can reset for tomorrow, but he can’t. his mind is full of his dream, of what it could mean. most dreams faded upon waking. this one stuck in his brain. 

he’s never had a dream that he didn’t understand before. 

maybe a walk would clear his head. he was already in trouble with nico. another break of routine wouldn’t hurt. 

well, it would, but he doesn’t think about that. 

~~he doesn’t think about a lot of things.~~

he sits up and swings his legs over the side of his cot. standing takes another moment of thought, of weighing the risks and rewards of violating routine even more than he already had.

even though the risks outweigh anything he could get out of the experience, he still gets up and exits his room.

he doesn’t put his shoes on, just walks quietly down the hall in his socks. the cold concrete floor and stairs make no sound as he walks. there’s no risk of creaking sounds when there’s no wood to make them.

the streets are deserted except for the ever-present vultures. they shift and stare down at him. one takes off and begins to circle overhead.

he goes west, right to the beginning of the glorious vista, the city limits.

he can’t hear the necropolis from here, but the light of the neon graves is enough to fill his thoughts and ears with neon.

there’s a shape, a person, out among the graves. they don’t see him yet, instead they scribble in what looks like a notebook. he’s only ever seen books in nico’s room, and never one that anyone would be allowed to write in.

the person looks right at him and freezes.

neither of them move for what feels like hours. he stares and they stare right back, pen touching the paper, wide scared eyes staring straight into his. their hair is long, black, and pulled into a messy bun at the base of their neck.

finally, they move, closing their book and tucking it into the waistband of their pants. their over-large shirt falls over it and obscures most of the shape. they walk towards him with slow, hesitant steps, and stop maybe ten feet away from him.

“east is up.” their voice is deep and smooth.

“east is up.” he responds. he doesn’t question why he does.

“what are you doing awake?”

“i could ask you the same thing.”

“fair.” they tilt their head, studying him. “i’m loren, from keons.”

he hesitates for only a second. “i’m franklin. from nico.”

they flinch. “you’re not going to have a good time when he finds out.”

“i already slept through worship and mealtime and work. it can’t get worse.”

they nod in understanding. “my real name is clancy. isn’t the response of your assigned name so strangely automatic? i can’t untrain myself from loren if it is the first thing that rolls off my tongue.” their dark brown eyes stare into him, reaching into his soul. “do you have a real name?”

“i do.” ~~he does.~~

“what is it?”

“i don’t remember.”

clancy studies him for a long moment. “you’ve been cleansed?”

he nods automatically, then feels confused. “i still don’t understand what that is.”

“it’s when your bishop pulls whatever thoughts he doesn’t like out of your mind, and stores them in smaller vials for when it is time for your grave. it usually results in you becoming mindless until it is finally time for you to die. however,” clancy squints at him, “if you’ve been cleansed you shouldn’t even be able to be out here, much less be able to sleep through the day.”

“then maybe i wasn’t cleansed.”

“do you remember any vials touching your head? they usually don’t remove the memory of the cleansing, as a warning of sorts.”

~~in nico’s room.~~

~~in nico’s room.~~

~~madison pulling him away.~~

~~out among the graves he’s standing at right now.~~

~~in nico’s room.~~

~~in nico’s room.~~

“six times.”

clancy winces. “how are you alive? getting cleansed twice is enough to kill someone.”

“i don’t know.”

a vulture shrieks loud overhead, and clancy’s eyes blow wide.

“get back to your room.”

“why-”

“go!”

clancy bolts.

he’s too confused to move for a few seconds, and then he’s running back along the streets. the shriek sounds again, and a look up shows vultures circling over him and over what must be clancy.

he makes it to his building and manages to shut the door quietly. he makes as little noise as possible while dashing up the stairs and along the hallway. he stops, breathing hard, hand on the doorknob to his room.

no sound of pursuit.

he enters his room and sits on his cot. he slips a hand up his shirt and places a hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat against his ribcage. it sounds loud in his ears. 

lying down brings some relief.

he doesn’t move until there’s a knock on his door, and then he gets up and slips his shoes on and goes to worship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bad things happen in the next few chapters


	9. what have i become

nico’s eyes bore into him during worship.

he doesn’t show that he notices, he just follows every instruction and action. he acts like he’s always been the best citizen. ~~he never has been.~~

he exits the building after worship and heads to mealtime, but a hand on his shoulder stops him. he turns to see one of nico’s chosen staring at him with red eyes. 

“come with me.”

he has no choice but to follow. 

the chosen leads him to nico’s tower. 

with every step he feels dread and anxiety and fear rise up within him, filling his brain with a buzz too similar to the vials. 

he’s lead into the tower, up the steps, and left in the doorway to nico’s room. 

nico has his back to the entrance. he’s looking over a bookshelf filled with white and black and gray and red books. he doesn’t turn as he speaks. “franklin.”

“hi.” he doesn’t know how else to respond. 

“you know what happens when you break routine.”

“i do.” he does. 

“now, i’m hoping that you won’t struggle. it’ll make it easier on the both of us.” nico finally turns to face him. his eyes are hard and cold and red. “i’m disappointed in you, franklin. first sleeping through the day, then going out after dark.”

how did nico know?

“take him.”

he’s grabbed by two chosen. he doesn’t resist as he’s steered up another flight of stairs that spiral around the tower, going up and up and up.

they stop on one of the landings. the chosen to his left opens a heavy wooden door, and then he’s pushed inside. the door shuts with a slam. 

the room is barren except for the vials in the center that streak light across the room. there’s no windows, no furniture, not even a cot. there’s only concrete walls and floor and ceiling. 

it’s cold. 

he pulls the long sleeves of his shirt over his hands. his body begins to shiver as he stands there, staring at the vials. they shine bright in his eyes, they buzz loud in his ears. 

he decides to sit in the farthest corner from the door and pull his legs up to his chest. the walls and floor are freezing. the cold seeps into his skin, crawling through his muscles and settling in his bones. he lets himself shiver, lets his teeth chatter, lets his body react to the chill in any way it wants to.

time drags on as he sits there. there’s nothing to focus on but the cold and the vials that sit in the center of the room, glowing and buzzing. their neon makes its way into every part of him, taking over his eyes first, then buzzing in his ears and settling on his tongue. his skin vibrates with neon. 

he measures the hours in how much his stomach begins to grumble. he hadn’t eaten the day before he’d been put in this cell, and he felt it. 

his mind occupies itself by trying to piece itself together. whatever nico took from him in cleansing won’t come back without a fight. the memories won’t even come back at all. 

frustration bubbles up within him the longer he sits in the corner, staring at the floor and shivering. he’s hungry and thirsty and tired and cold, and his body hurts from the hard floor, and he just wants his memories back. 

he stands up. 

the vials mock him with their existence. they remind him of the necropolis, of the sheer amount of graves. 

~~there’s never been enough people in dema to fill those graves.~~

a memory blinds him. 

~~going east, east, only to find himself west.~~

~~a loop.~~

~~why?~~

what is going on?

anger and frustration sear his veins, and before he’s fully conscious of what his body wants to do he’s already smashed the vials in the center of the room. 

their glass exteriors put up a fight, but he kicks and punches and they shatter anyways, giving up to darkness. 

he doesn’t stop his destruction until every vial is in shards on the cold ground, until all of their light is violently extinguished. 

several moments pass. 

he breathes hard, staring at nothing in the pitch black. 

the door opens. 

through the light filtering in, he can see nico standing there, just outside of the doorway. 

he picks up a good sized piece of glass and holds it out threateningly, taking a step towards nico. glass crunches under his feet. 

nico doesn’t move, doesn’t seem fazed at all. “that’s not a healthy way of taking out your anger.”

his chest rises and falls with each heaving breath he takes. “what’s going on.”

nico’s head tilts slightly. “right now, you are trying to threaten me with-”

“that’s not what i mean.”

“well, whatever’s going on with you clearly needs to be-”

“i mean with this world!” his voice rises. “why does it loop, why do i dream about a place i’ve never been, what is happening!”

“i think those are questions you need to ask yourself.”

“i know you know the answers.” he takes another step forwards, anger written all over his face, shard of glass pointing towards nico’s eyes. “i know i’ve been cleansed six times. if you want to do that again, fine, but just tell me what’s happening.”

nico studies him for a long moment, then smiles. “oh tyler, if i tell you, it’ll ruin the fun.”

the smile is the thing that really scares him. bishops don’t smile. their expressions stay cold and still. it takes longer for his mind to process what nico actually said, and then a moment more to respond. 

“what?”

nico laughs. 

the sound sends shivers all across his body. 

“maybe if you tell me things, i’ll tell you some of what's happening,” nico says. “you had another one of those dreams, right?”

“another?”

“oh, that’s right. i cleansed you of the first one.”

he takes a second to collect his thoughts. there’s a chance that nico is lying, that if he tells nico about his dream he will get nothing in return. but his desire for knowledge outweighs his fear. maybe the risk is worth it. 

“i did have another.” he speaks slowly, not lowering the glass shard. “i was somewhere that i haven’t seen before. there was a woman, she had blond hair and blue eyes. we were talking about…” he pauses, trying to remember. “a world that i was working on. i was going to talk about it, to try and fix things, then… i woke up.”

nico’s expression betrays a flicker of realization. “well, that clarifies a couple things.”

“what things?”

“it doesn't matter.”

“tell. me.” he steps forward again, holding the glass shard tightly, prepared to strike. its edges cut into his hand, and his blood runs in rivulets down his arm and drips onto the floor. 

“you talked to loren from keons.”

“so?”

nico stays silent. 

“i don’t understand.”

“good.” nico finally steps into the room. “now, can you answer just a few questions for me?”

“sure.”

“what was the woman’s name?”

his brow furrows. her name sits on the back of his tongue, stays buried in the holes in his memory, and he knows that her name should come as easy as breathing. 

but. 

“i don’t remember.”

“was there another person there?”

“one was mentioned. josh. he wasn’t there, though.”

“what does this josh look like?”

again, he knows that he should know what josh looks like, but he doesn’t. 

“i don’t remember.”

“why say remember?”

the question catches him off guard. “huh?”

“you don’t have any knowledge of them outside of this dream, right?”

“...yes.” he hates to admit it. 

“so you don’t know. it’s not that you don’t remember, it’s that you don't know.”

~~he should remember.~~ “okay.”

“so, let’s try this again.”

~~he doesn’t want to.~~

“what was the name of that woman?”

it hurts his heart to answer. “i don’t know.”

“what does josh look like?”

the hand holding the shard drops to his side. “i don’t know.” his eyes meet the floor. 

“there we go.” nico steps into the room and takes his free hand. “i think you’ve learned your lesson. it wouldn’t be useful keeping you here any longer.”

“how long was my punishment?”

“a day and a half.” nico leads him out of the cell. “you'll make it back to your room in time to sleep.”

he wants to eat.

“i’m sorry.”

“i forgive you.” nico turns back towards him. “just, be good in the future.”

he nods, and then stabs the shard of glass into nico’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh oh


	10. cut me farther than i’ve ever been

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tyler does something in this chapter that could definitely be read as a suicide attempt, so stay safe please

two things happen, one after the other. 

the first is that nico’s form flickers into a man with red, red eyes, a red beanie, and black clothes. it flickers back, but not before he gets an extreme feeling of staring into a mirror for the first time in weeks. 

the next thing is that the entire world flickers into what his brain says is a studio. he’s standing back from a computer monitor, and there’s a voice speaking to him that he can’t quite hear, and then he’s back on the landing in nico’s tower. 

he drops his arm and steps back, leaving the glass in nico’s face. 

nico, to his credit, remains expressionless, but his voice shows every piece of anger he feels.

“you really shouldn’t have done that.”

there’s nowhere for him to run but up the tower. nico is blocking the way down, the only chance he could have of escaping.

he turns and bolts up the stairs.

his legs are weak from sitting for so long, but he forces himself to move. bishops don’t run.

but then again, nico had smiled, nico had laughed, and those were things bishops don’t do either.

he looks back once to see nobody behind him. 

he runs up, up, up the stairs and across landings and past heavy wooden doors. blood still drips from his hand, and it leaves a trail behind him. it’s not like that matters, though. there’s only one way for him to go.

at the top of the tower is a large circular room. like everything in the towers, it’s lit by vials along the walls, but these ones are dim. he can just barely make out a ladder in the center and a trapdoor above it.

he sprints to the ladder as fast as his body will let him and begins to climb. he pushes on the trapdoor and it opens. there are no locks in dema.

wind howls across the top of nico’s tower. it echoes in his ears, replacing the neon that had made itself at home. 

he crawls out and shuts the trapdoor behind him, standing up and giving himself a chance to breathe.

from the roof he can see across the west of dema, out into the west of the outside. there is nothing beyond dema resonates in his head. now, he knows that’s not true, that the bishops have always been liars.

the cold light from the vials that light the city seem to cover any light that might come from the outside, from trench.

up high, with the wind in his ears, he finally gets a chance to think.

he pushes any idea of contrary thought out of his brain and lets himself think freely. nico would probably cleanse him of this event anyways.

tyler. nico had called him tyler. he didn’t know whether it was a slip up or on purpose, whether nico had planned to cleanse him all along, had planned to tell him what was happening and then take his understanding away.

what had nico meant by his dream clarifying things? what did clancy have to do with that?

a vulture lands next to him and tilts its head, staring at him with one large eye.

“hi.”

it doesn’t respond. he wasn’t expecting anything else.

“what does clancy have to do with me talking about my own creation?”

still nothing.

“was i even me in that dream?”

the vulture turns its head and regards him with its other eye.

he makes eye contact. “her name is jenna. josh has brown hair and brown eyes.”

it shrieks and flies off.

he watches it leave. “i guess that means i’m right.”

the trapdoor opens.

he turns and watches as nico’s two chosen come out, their red eyes boring into him. one of them has shoulder-length light brown hair, and she stares at him with equal reverence and revulsion. the other has black hair, and his eyes say nothing at all.

“franklin.” the one with brown hair speaks. her voice is monotone. “come with us.”

“i don’t want to.”

“you don’t have a choice.”

“i think i do.” he turns his head and glances behind him. it’s a long fall to the ground.

the black haired one steps towards him. “you do have some of a choice. you can give up, or you can struggle.”

“what are your names?”

his question catches the two off guard.

“why?” she asks.

“i just want to know. tell me, and i’ll come quietly.” his hand is still bleeding, his blood the same red as their eyes. “it’ll be a lot easier on yourselves.”

they look at each other for a long moment.

she speaks first. “judy.”

“robert.”

“those are nice names.” he says.

robert takes another step. “now, you’ll come with us.”

“of course.” he bows slightly to them. “oh, and by the way, east is up.”

he turns, runs, and jumps off the edge of the tower.

air whistles past his ears. he can see people in the streets of the districts, heading back to their rooms after work. some of them turn to look at him as he falls.

vultures take off from the surrounding buildings and begin to circle.

the ground rushes up to meet him. he wonders if it’ll hurt.

it does.

then he sits up in bed, breathing hard and loud into the quiet night air.

“tyler?”

he’s breathing and taking in air but it feels like none of it is sticking in his lungs. his brain finds the word for it a few seconds later.

he’s hyperventilating.

“tyler, honey, breathe with me.”

he recognizes her voice, recognizes her touch as she presses a hand to his bare chest and wraps an arm across his shoulders.

“come on, breathe in, one, two, three, four, now breathe out, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. again, i know you’ve got this, one, two, three, four…”

he struggles to match his breathing with her whispered words. his mind is going so fast and yet isn’t moving at all, his consciousness focused on the feeling of slamming into the ground. 

her name comes to him like something suddenly remembered. jenna. 

he finds it easier to breathe with her after that. 

it feels like it takes hours for him to calm down, even though it’s only a few minutes. his breaths slow and so does his heart rate, but he can’t stop his entire body from shaking. 

“what happened?” jenna asks, after his breathing is steady. “do you want to talk about it?”

“was i dreaming?” his words are rough, scared. wasn’t this the dream? wasn’t jenna just someone his mind conjured up?

no. jenna was in dema. she’d escaped dema.

“what do you mean?” she’s still holding him, arm across his shoulders and hand on his chest. he lets himself relax into her touch, lets himself lean against her body. 

“i’m… i’m confused.”

“do you want to talk about it?”

he considers for a moment. “yes. i was… i was-”

his consciousness forms itself back together in time to hear the hushed voices of nico and andre. 

“-miracle he’s alive.” andre speaks with a rough, hurried voice. 

nico’s is the same as ever, deep and smooth. “is it a miracle that we want?”

“i don’t know.”

“i noticed something, did you?”

“i felt stronger.”

“so did i.”

he slips away again into the dark. 

he doesn’t dream.


	11. i know you're not a liar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updates have been slowing because i'm stuck on chapter 20, apologies. i've been trying to stay pretty far ahead of what's posted.

the next time he comes back to his body, all he can feel is pain. 

it radiates through his chest and back, all along his legs and down his arms. his head seems to have been spared from the worst of it, though, and that’s a small blessing. if all of him hurt, he’s not sure he’d be able to handle it.

he tries out moving his fingers, and the pain that the simple action causes him to groan reflexively.

“you’re awake.” that’s nico’s voice.

he manages to open his eyes. the world is blurry. he sees a ceiling, but instead of gray it’s red, lit by the red light of a vial above his head.

he tries to speak, but another groan comes out.

“shh. you had quite the fall.” nico’s form appears above him.

he blinks, and his vision comes into a little more focus. nico’s face shows no expression, nothing of what could be going through his mind.

“what were you thinking, franklin?”

“i don’t know.” he doesn’t.

“first attacking me, then jumping? you know neither of those things were going to get you anywhere.” nico reaches out and touches his cheek. he’s in too much pain to flinch.

he closes his eyes. “i’m sorry.” the simple words hurt his mind more than his body.

“rest, now.”

he drifts away again.

his eyes open to another person smiling at him. light brown eyes are lit up by light, and it shines through shaved brown hair.

josh. it’s josh.

“you just trailed off mid-sentence, dude.” josh’s smile lights his whole face up with warmth.

“sorry.” he looks around. they’re sitting on the floor by a large window, light streaming in. outside is green trees and grass, a forest that immediately reads as familiar. 

“you okay?” josh reaches out and rests a hand on his shoulder. “your energy just shifted.”

“i’m, um.” he doesn’t know how to express how strange it is to go from dema to here, a house that feels like his even though he’s never been there, with a person that he knows is his best friend even though he’s never seen him before.

wait.

he has seen josh before. in trench. in dema.

he looks over and sees josh waiting patiently for his next words, slight concern in his face.

he finds his words again. “i don’t know.”

“want to talk about the lyrics some more?” josh, always prompting, always helpful, always kind.

“yeah. what ones were we…?”

“the hype.”

“right.”

he wakes a little bit, eyes still closed. he can hear voices.

“-net that he put in.” nico’s talking.

“want me to try it?” andre again.

“nills already tried. couldn’t do anything.”

“well, let me. nills has too much context.”

“you are west.”

he can hear steps towards him. he stays still, silent, keeping his breathing even like he’s still unconscious.

“so?” andre’s voice is closer to him now. 

“get sacarver to try it.” there’s a strange anxiety in nico’s voice.

“sacarver doesn’t have it in him. and before you suggest keons, he can barely cleanse his own subjects.”

“listo?”

andre pauses before replying. “possibly. but, just let me try first.”

there’s the sound of shifting robes by his ears. he stays deathly still.

something sharp presses into his chest.

the point of what must be a knife twists, but doesn’t dig into his skin. it barely tears through his clothes.

there’s a growl of frustration above him.

“i told you it wouldn’t work.” nico sounds just a bit smug.

“shut up.” andre’s tone is tense and angry. the knife is removed from his chest, and he feels like he can breathe easier again. “get listo.”

there’s a sudden silence.

“what? what’s that look for?” he can hear andre turn as he speaks.

nico speaks quietly. “we can’t hurt him.”

“we can’t, but maybe-”

“no. we, as bishops, can’t hurt him. i don’t think anyone here can but himself.”

more silence.

“okay.” andre sounds calm. “so? what do we do?”

“call a meeting. i have an idea, but i’ll need everyone’s feedback.”

there’s the sound of footsteps leaving.

he slowly counts to ten before he opens his eyes.

the room he’s in is barren. there’s only a red vial above his head to light the room, but it’s bright enough to shine into the corners. the only shadows are from the cot he’s on and his own body.

the red is like the bishop’s robes.

he looks down at his broken body.

his clothes aren’t what he’s used to wearing in dema, a red tank top and red shorts. there’s wraps and splints on his arms and legs, some bandages soaked through with blood, others just seeming to hold the splints in place.

red, red, red. it soaks into his brain. there’s no buzz from the vial.

he tries to sit up and immediately involuntarily cries out. one of his arms must be broken, as well as several of his ribs. he can only lie there.

he starts crying and stops soon after. it hurts too much.

he stares up at the red neon, and lets his pain carry him away into sleep.

no dreams. he almost misses them, even though they mostly bring confusion. he misses jenna and josh, misses how comforting they feel even though he can barely remember them.

nico was wrong. it wasn’t that he doesn’t know. it’s that he doesn’t remember.

he doesn’t remember a lot of things.

he opens his eyes again to less pain than before.

“is that easier?” nico stares down at him.

“wha-”

“shh, just appreciate that i made it easier for you. nills said i should let you suffer.”

he stays silent.

“there you go. it’s a miracle you’re alive, you know. your fall was quite the spectacle.”

he thinks about all the people in his district that saw him. ~~he doesn’t think about the vultures that had been swarming above him.~~

“you’ll heal.” nico reaches out and brushes hair off of his forehead, then rests his hand there.

~~don’t move. don’t flinch. stay still. nico can’t know how uncomfortable he is.~~

“how do you feel?”

he considers his body and state of mind. “hurts.”

“but less than before, right?”

“yeah.”

nico takes his hand away. “go back to sleep.”

his vision drops away and he falls into blackness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bishop antics tm


	12. but do i want to say goodbye

he opens his eyes to both josh and jenna. 

all three of them are on a couch together, watching a movie. he’s leaning against jenna on his left, and josh sits on his right.

he squints at the screen. his eyes won’t focus on his surroundings, so he’s not sure what they’re watching.

josh tips his head back and laughs, and he can hear jenna chuckle softly.

he closes his eyes again, and lets himself sleep.

at some point he registers being carried, but he doesn’t know if it’s in his dream or in dema. hushed voices echo past his ears.

he feels pain in his ribs. he’s in dema.

he misses the dream world.

it doesn’t return to him. the next time he opens his eyes, he’s in his room in dema with the white glow and buzz of the vials.

he still hurts, but its fallen away to more of an ache. he’s back to being dressed in white and gray, in long sleeves and pants. he can still feel bandages around his limbs, but no more splints.

there’s a knock on his door.

he sits up slowly. his pain level doesn’t rise, just stays at a hum across his body. It’s very unpleasant, but at least he can move.

he swings his legs over the edge of his cot and stands up. he steadies himself on his set of drawers, scared that he’ll fall over.

he takes one step, then another. no changes in his pain.

joining the flow of people heading to worship is strange. he’s not sure how his body is moving, not sure what nico did to make his pain lessen, to make him sleep for hours and hours.

he’s not even sure how long its been since his fall.

he sits in the back at worship. his mind feels strange as he prays, and it doesn’t take long for him to realize what the feeling is.

he’s been cleansed again.

at mealtime, he sits alone and eats slowly. he’s not even sure what he’s eating. the food in dema is tasteless, only enough to keep the citizens alive.

he goes to work with a feeling of apprehension in his stomach.

“you.” jill says as he enters.

“me.” he sits down.

“you’re the guy who jumped off nico’s tower.”

he nods. he doesn’t know how else he’s supposed to respond to that.

“you’ve been gone for two weeks. they didn’t replace you, so i knew you were alive, but still.” she doesn’t look at him the entire time she speaks.

two weeks. It didn’t feel like two weeks, but he’d been unconscious for almost all that time.

what had nico done to make him sleep for that long?

he works and decides not to think too much about it. if he worries, he won’t be productive. he doesn’t want anything to tip off nico that he isn’t recovered enough to be a good citizen.

on his way to his room, he lets himself think again.

he can’t go on like this, being cleansed over and over. he needs to get out of dema, go into… into…

trench.

the outside of dema is called trench.

he needs to get ~~back~~ into trench. he needs to leave dema ~~again~~.

when he gets to the room, his mind is drawn to one of his drawers. he opens it.

four yellow flowers. ~~four escape attempts that he doesn’t remember.~~

even though he was only conscious for a few moments of it, his recovery has left him feeling trapped in dema. the cleansing that nico did didn’t erase his dreams, and he yearns for that feeling of home that he now knows lies in trench.

he lies in his cot, staring up at his gray ceiling. the light from the vials outside dims. he knows that everyone else is asleep.

maybe it’s too risky to escape now. nico probably has a close eye on him.

he falls asleep, and doesn’t dream.

the next day he wakes up, goes to worship, goes to mealtime, goes to work, and then goes back to his room and sleeps. plans about escaping spin in his head.

the next day is the same.

the next day is the same.

the next day is the same.

it takes him ten days to realize that he’s fallen back into the loop that traps the citizens of dema. the monotony is what keeps you there, what makes you forget about leaving.

he stays awake during sleeptime. in what he guesses is the middle of it, he slips out of his room.

he doesn’t dare go near the towers, and instead skirts around the edges of the districts. the necropolis glows on his left, and its neon buzz fills his ears. he tries to push past its influence, past its calling.

once he’s at the east-most point he can be without crossing the glorious vista, he steadies himself.

if he can just get through the necropolis, he’ll be okay.

~~he doesn’t think about how he’s been dragged back before.~~

he runs.

somehow, it’s easier this time, maybe because his mind has been full of thoughts of trench and people and home. even though his body still feels the pain of his fall, he finds it easier to put it out of his mind. he reaches the east wall easier than he ever has before, finds the gap near the bottom and squeezes through.

he’s out. he’s in trench. he’s free.

he keeps running, keeps moving, until he’s far enough from dema that he feels safe slowing to a walk.

trench feels so hot compared to dema, and at some point he takes off his shirt and leaves it behind in the dirt. he’d taken his bandages off a few days ago, and he takes the time to properly inspect his arms rather than move swiftly so he stays on routine.

on his right arm, there’s a series of symbols on both sides of his forearm. he struggles to puzzle them out, but his brain provides no explanation. it doesn’t tell him anything about the symbol on his upper arm. he only feels a vague sense of home.

black bands wrap around his left arm, leading up to a symbol made of rectangles. he can’t identify what it means, but he feels like he should.

on his chest, there’s more rectangles, a set of four on the left and one with lines on the right. he reaches up and touches the right symbol.

it’s paining him to not know what they mean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he's out !


	13. i would get beat to

he arrives at the bandito camp as sun starts to light the horizon.

there’s two people sitting next to the dying fire, one with shaved blond hair and a scar and the other with short, messy, dark hair. they’re talking together, faces animated and smiling, but their happy expressions are replaced with apprehension as they hear him approach.

the blond one whips around to look at him. his eyes widen. “oh wow. we didn’t think you’d ever escape again.”

it takes him a moment to put names to their faces. vax. bee.

vax stands and continues speaking. “want me to wake up josh and jenna? they’ll be ecstatic to know you’re back.”

“i’ll go do that right now.” bee starts moving towards one of the tents.

“oh no, you are not taking the moment of me seeing their faces away.” vax moves with startling speed, and so does bee.

the two of them end up reaching one of the tents at the same time, and their words overlap each other.

“josh. jenna. hey. wake up!”

“guys, you aren’t going to believe who’s here.”

“up, up, wake up, i want to see your eyes.”

“vax, that’s the weirdest way of putting that.”

“wake up, josh and jenna, tyler’s here!”

“really?” that’s jenna’s voice.

“would we mess with you on this?”

“i want to see him.” that’s josh.

vax and bee step back from the tent, bee swearing softly and returning to tending the fire, vax watching and helping jenna stand as she emerges.

she turns and sees him, and her hand covers her mouth in shock. “tyler?”

tears brim up in his eyes when he sees her, and he rushes forwards to hug her.

her arms wrap around him tightly, and he leans down to bury his face in her shoulder. arms surround the two of them from behind him, and he recognizes the warmth of josh.

“we didn’t think you’d ever escape again.” josh murmurs. “we thought nico would never let you go.”

he realizes he’s crying when he lifts his face from jenna’s shoulder. 

“tyler.” she cups his face with her hands.

before he he’s fully aware of what he’s doing, he’s kissing her.

they’re locked together for a moment before his mind clears and he pulls away. he blinks, stunned, and she smiles at him. 

“that was nice.”

he’s confused. “i don’t know why i did that. sorry.”

“it’s fine.” she kisses the tip of his nose. “it was nice.”

josh hugs him from behind again, strong arms radiating heat into his bare skin. “put a shirt on!”

“i was hot!” he tries to escape from josh’s grasp and fails, only managing to wiggle around. 

jenna laughs at the two of them. “he’s nice without a shirt on.”

“yeah, but this is trench! shirts are mandatory!” josh lifts him off his feet by leaning backwards, but then almost loses his balance. josh sets him back down on the ground, and the grip on him loosens enough for him to escape. 

all three of them are laughing together, and he recognizes the feeling of home that he’d been craving in dema. 

“i think i have your yellow hoodie in here…” jenna ducks back inside her and josh’s tent, and emerges a few seconds later with a worn, slightly dirty yellow hoodie. “someone always leaves it just outside the walls. maybe nico?”

“probably one of his chosen.” josh helps him get the hoodie on. he’s not used to the motions. 

“can chosen see yellow?”

“i’m pretty sure. it’s only the cleansed that can’t.”

he realizes that he’s tired and hungry. “can i sleep for a bit?”

“of course.” josh answers. “i had a night watch, actually, so if you want to join me in getting a bit more sleep before things happen…?”

“i want to.” he wants to stay with josh always. josh feels like home. “can we eat after?”

“we can eat whenever.”

he assesses his body and mind. “after sleep.”

josh pulls open the tent flap and beckons him inside. 

he crawls in, and josh follows soon after. most of the tent is taken up by blankets and pillows forming a nest in the center, with camouflage clothing, yellow tape, and various other supplies crowding around the edges. 

josh settles on his side into the blankets and opens his arms.

he crawls in beside josh and settles against his warmth.

it’s so, so easy to fall asleep. 

trench is where he belongs. 

he doesn’t dream at all, but he still wakes up being safe and comfortable. 

josh is wrapped around him, holding onto him like he’s afraid he’ll disappear. its a valid fear. he could be taken away by nico at any moment. 

but everything seems peaceful for now. there’s the sound of voices outside the tent, and light streams through the cracks of the entrance. 

he shifts a little to get more comfortable, and that’s enough for josh to stir and crack his eyes open. 

“you’re still here.” josh sounds almost amazed. 

“maybe i can stay a while.”

“i hope so.”

they lie together for a little while, soaking in each other’s company and warmth. at some point josh drops back into a doze, breathing steady and even. 

he doesn’t sleep, just stays there in josh’s arms. 

his stomach starting to growl is what rouses josh again. 

“right. food.” josh lets go reluctantly and sits up. he yawns, arms stretching upwards and brushing the top of the tent. “lets go.”

josh crawls out of the tent. 

he pauses before following. he’s still taking in being in trench again, still taking in the free feeling he feels. it’s like there’s been a pressure on his chest the whole time that's only been lifted by escaping the walls of dema. 

he exits the tent slowly. 

the outside is bright, light shining down from a clear blue sky. the rays hit him and fill him with warmth, reaching down into his chilled bones. 

“tyler!” jenna grins and beckons him into the group of banditos. 

the faces soon become familiar to him again. ella and mars and erin and grace sit together in a clump. he tries to commit everything about them to memory, even though he knows he’ll be cleansed when he’s dragged back to dema. 

no, if. if he’s dragged back. 

he sits between josh and jenna. josh on his right, jenna on his left. 

“here.” jenna passes him a camouflage jacket adorned with yellow tape on the shoulders and a strip around the left arm. 

he shrugs it on. it feels right to be wearing it, like being among the banditos is truly where he belongs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> softs


	14. could take the high road

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> frens!!

after he eats, jenna teaches him how to tend to the fire during the day. 

“you don’t ever really want it to go out.” she hands him a long piece of twisted metal. “poking and adding a few sticks will help.”

“how long has this fire been going?” he pokes the embers. it doesn’t seem to do much. 

“i think since the first few banditos. nobody here was around then.”

“what happened to the first people?”

“they were dragged back.” 

he thinks for a moment. “how long were they out?”

“years.” jenna looks over at him. “nobody escapes twice.”

“so i’m weird.”

“you’ve always been weird.”

there’s silence between the two of them.

he doesn’t know where she got the always part from. they barely knew each other. 

what had been taken from him?

“look.” mars stands up. “people.”

there’s two figures climbing up to the camp. one of them is supporting the other as they stumble up the slope. they both wear glasses, they both have dark hair, but one’s is long and swept across his forehead and the other’s is cut close to her head.

they reach the edge of camp and stop.

“are you…” she starts to speak, then takes in their appearance. “oh.” her eyes blow wide.

“hey, hey, hey.” mars hold her hands up, fingers spread wide. “we’re not gonna hurt you.”

“th-the bishops said that banditos would-”

“aren’t you out here because the bishops are wrong?”

she stays quiet, keeping the other person on his feet with an arm underneath his shoulders.

mars takes a couple steps towards the two. “what are your names?”

“i’m mindy. this is chris.” she gestures with her free arm to her companion, who just holds onto her and breathes. “he’s sick, please don’t-”

“we aren’t in dema anymore. we’re in trench.” mars smiles at them. she has a very comforting presence. “i should have clarified my question. what are your real names?”

she pauses. “um. i’m katie. damian is my friend. we’re both from lisden.” katie steadies her breathing. “east is up.”

“east is up.” mars responds. it doesn’t sound automatic. “let’s help him lie down in one of the tents. you can rest too. getting out from dema is difficult. we’re very proud of you two.” mars helps support damian and guides the two towards one of the tents.

he watches as they disappear inside. “will he be okay?”

“of course.” jenna takes the metal from him and sets it down. “trench is healing. people get sick in dema just from existing there.”

“it’s cold in dema.” he stares at the embers.

“it is.”

“i hate the cold.” he doesn’t know why that’s occurring to him just now.

“i think everyone out here does. it’s part of why we leave.”

he thinks about it. “that and literally everything else about dema.”

jenna laughs. “well, yeah.”

he tunes out most of the surrounding conversation and stares at the embers. they radiate out a soft warmth that he can only feel when he stretches a hand towards them. it’s hard for him to believe that it hasn’t gone out since the first banditos set up camp here. 

he looks around and lets himself be absorbed into his surroundings. trench has more color than dema could even dream of, with its blue sky and green and brown terrain. the banditos stand out with their yellow strips of tape - a bright flag among the terrain for anyone who seeks shelter. 

but what about the bishops?

a memory occurs to him. he placed a second yellow flower and a note within a drawer. when he looked in there later, after nico had been in his room, the note had been gone, but the flowers remained. he remembered, after nico had cleansed him out in the necropolis, looking in that same drawer and seeing it empty. 

they can’t see yellow. 

why hadn’t he been able to for that hazy period of time?

maybe it was because of the way he was cleansed. 

just thinking about the necropolis brings the neon back into his ears. 

memories he’d been cleansed of slowly return to him throughout the day. something about the air in trench undoes what nico did to him. 

he remembers first meeting josh and jenna. 

he remembers debby telling him to figure things out. 

he remembers clancy.

he remembers his first dream. 

he remembers that trench loops around. 

he remembers his first escape attempt, which had just been him running blind and alone across the necropolis and through the gap in the east wall. nico had grabbed him and dragged him back within minutes, but not before he’d grabbed a yellow flower. 

he remembers his second escape attempt with josh, where they had almost made it to be bandito camp before he got smeared. he’d shoved a flower in his pocket while they had been making their trek. 

josh had slipped a flower into his pocket the third time, while he’d been sleeping. same with the fourth. a way to keep track, to make sure he always knew how many times he’d made it out okay. 

he picks a yellow flower while the light fades. he’s made it through a whole day, and there is no nico in sight. maybe he really is safe out in trench.

sleep comes easy to him while he’s wrapped in jenna and josh’s arms. 

he opens his eyes to see that the three of them are sitting around a table, colored and numbered cards in their hands. 

“uno.” josh says. there’s just one card in his hand. 

“aw, come on.” he has no control over his actions. 

“you’re just mad because you have a bunch of cards.” josh sticks his tongue out. 

jenna laughs, and then puts a card down. 

the card he picks is strategic. “draw four. and i choose yellow.”

“i hate you!” there’s no genuine anger in josh’s voice or expression. “i can't believe you’re making me do this. i thought you loved me!”

“you thought wrong!”

“boys, boys.” jenna sighs, then places down a card. “uno.”

“what!”

“no fair!”

the three of them dissolve into laughter. 

he wakes up at the same time as josh and jenna do, head still spinning with the dream. it’s still dark outside, but the faint firelight that leaks in is enough to expose the confused looks on all of their faces. 

“did you…?” he doesn’t know how to ask. 

“the dream?” jenna murmurs. “did you have it too?”

josh speaks tiredly. “what’s uno?”

he feels the sudden comfort of knowing that he’s not going insane.

“discuss tomorrow.” jenna offers. “i’m still tired.”

“good idea.” josh closes his eyes, and moments later he’s snoring. 

he struggles to fall back asleep, even after josh and jenna are already sleeping. 

they had dreams like that too. 

he wasn’t alone.


	15. from a dreamer's sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> debby and josh are getting married im so happy!!!!

the next morning, he wakes up to just jenna with him in the tent. 

she's curled up against him, both holding him and being held by him. it’s comforting in a way he doesn’t have words for, and he wishes he could spend the rest of his life like this. 

he doesn’t move to get up for a long while, just soaks up her warmth and the warmth of trench and the ambient sounds of existence outside of dema. there’s soft voices, laughter, the sounds of birds that aren’t vultures.

jenna stirs eventually, yawning wide as her eyes blink open. she looks up at him and smiles. “you’re still here.”

“of course i am.” on impulse, he kisses her forehead. 

she makes a soft sound of content. “do you want to get up yet?”

“not really.” 

“then we can wait.”

lying with her is soft and gentle and everything he could ever wish for. 

they both realize they’re hungry around the same time. jenna exits the tent first, and he waits a few moments before following, basking in the gentleness of the morning. 

grace, mars, damian, katie, and josh sit around the fire. even though light blazes across the terrain, flames still reach skyward, but they’re smaller than during the night. 

he sits down so that josh is on his right, and jenna joins him on his left. 

damian looks much more awake and mobile, and he sips something from a makeshift bowl. 

“food.” josh hands him something wrapped in shiny plastic.

he unwraps it to expose something beige and clumped together. he bites into it and chews slowly. it doesn’t taste like much, but it’s better than what’s in dema. 

“where do you get these?”

josh answers. “there’s a road down south that leads up to dema. if we’re quick and careful, when the cars are stopped we can grab supplies from them.”

in dema, it never occurred to him that things needed to come from outside. the bishops had always said that there was nothing beyond the walls. in dema, he would have rejected the idea. 

but now, out in trench, it makes perfect sense to him. of course dema would need things from outside. it could never be truly self-sufficient. there wasn’t enough space. 

“how many banditos are there?”

“with the new additions, we’re up to eleven, if you stick around.”

“that’s not a lot.”

josh sighs. “yeah. a couple weeks before i got here, the bishops organized a raid of the camp. andre, lisden, nico, vetomo, nills, and reisdro came all the way out here and smeared so, so many. we went from thirty-four people to just five. then i showed up, then erin, then jenna, and now katie and damian. we’ll rebuild. it’ll just take time.”

“why not move camp, if the bishops know exactly where you are?”

“the fire is here.”

that doesn’t make as much sense as he wants it to. 

jenna touches his hand. “should we have the dream conversation now?”

he nods. 

“maybe in private?” josh offers. 

the three of them move back into their tent. they sit in a circle on top of the nest of blankets and pillows. 

josh wraps a blanket around his shoulders and settles into the soft pile. “so. dreams.”

“dreams.” he echoes. 

“i'll start, i guess?” josh chews on his lower lip. “you three are the only other people i’ve seen in my dreams, and i’ve only seen jenna in that last one. mostly i’m alone in them, i’m either out running or i’m drumming in an apartment. recently, though, i’ve been talking music with tyler.”

“the hype?”

“yes!” josh sits up. “we were talking and you, like, spaced out, and then were totally normal like a minute later.”

“that one minute was all my dream was.” he feels almost left out of that world. 

“i've had so many of them out here. i thought it was just my brain being weird, but...”

“we’re together, in the dreams.” jenna speaks up. “so maybe we’re meant to be together out here.”

“what do you dream about?”

she pauses, almost as if caught off guard by josh’s question. “well, sometimes it’s cooking, or baking, or comforting stuff like that. sometimes it’s taking a short walk through some trees in the middle of the night. sometimes it’s checking in on tyler in a studio. they vary, but they’re all centered around that one house.”

“so are mine.” he says. “but i have no idea what that means.”

“maybe it’s home.”

“maybe.”

the silence hangs heavy in the air.

“what’s on your mind, tyler?”

“nico didn’t like that i had dreams.” he murmurs. he feels awkward and exposed, talking about his bishop. “he said that i… i…”

a headache starts to split his skull. he presses a hand to his forehead.

jenna rests a hand on his shoulder.

“i… however he cleansed me after he talked about my first dream… there’s something he really doesn’t want me to know.” he rubs his temples and breathes, and the headache fades away. “maybe it’s the key to the dreams.”

“why us?” josh’s brow furrows. “why do we have these dreams? i’ve never heard anyone else talk about this.”

he thinks for a second about all the people he’s met. “i think debby might have dreams.” 

“debby?” josh leans forward, something frantic, excited, and desperate in his eyes. “where is she?”

“keons.” he squints. “i didn’t think you knew her.”

“i…” josh pauses. “no... i don’t know her.” he presses a spread hand to his chest, over his heart. “but it feels like i definitely do.”

“i think i do too.” jenna twists her fingers together. “tyler?”

“i knew her, before dema.” finally he can voice what his brain has been saying for so long. “I knew both of you, before dema.”

“there’s a before?” josh asks.

“i think we’ve just been cleansed of it.”

“but trench undoes the cleansing.”

“it must be like whatever nico did to make me not remember what the dreams mean.”

“but i… we…”

“josh.” jenna speaks with a gentle voice. “it’s okay. we’ll figure it out.”

“but it’s not okay!” josh is starting to hyperventilate. “why can’t we remember? why do i feel like i know this debby when i’ve never met her? how-” josh gestures to him, “how do i know his name is tyler when he’s never told us!?”

si ~~le#₴* &ᑫ(n!~ፚ%^$c@ጀ#ϰ%e=ֆ]ɮ[?3*Ꮧ)@~~

~~& ф#ɠ@Ꮰ>Ꮧ+someone#ɮ0Թ@שጀɆ* #!⌘%>ϰ;₴\grabs:/Ꮰ{ש+Ꮧ%ж! נ>ж]^д#ጀ%his@ᘔ}`ፚ1ֆ&קᑫ $ᘔ)ፚ~ֆ[-фneck|Ꮰ<{₴#)ᘔ=~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh oh


	16. you have no plans for me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for late update. holidays n such

“franklin.”

he can’t see. there’s neon in his eyes.

“franklin, listen to me.”

pain has made a home in his neck.

“nico, what did you do?”

“shut it, lisden. franklin, i need you to open your eyes, respond, anything. please.”

he can’t think. he can’t even remember how to breathe.

“tsk. empty set.”

“i said to shut it.”

there’s nothing in his brain.

“you messed it up.”

“what would you have done differently?”

“give me that vial.”

he remembers that he can feel when a vial is gently touched against his forehead. it slides along his skin, down the side of his face and to his chin. the cool glass is pulled away, and then he can see again.

lisden is standing in front of him, but not paying attention. “here.” he turns and gives the small glowing vial in his hand to nico.

“thank you.” nico tucks the vial away inside of his robes.

he blinks. “wha-”

nico shushes him before turning his attention back to lisden. “you’re very gentle.”

“you’re very aggressive. you could, and just did, remove more than you intend.”

“is that a drawback?”

lisden sighs. “just, please, be careful.”

“you as well.” 

with a sweep of his robes, lisden leaves, head held high.

his brain refuses to process anything that’s happening. the events of the last few minutes pass across his mind like a shadow. 

nico takes a second to compose himself. “franklin, go to your room. it’s almost sleeptime.”

he responds to the command without thinking, exiting nico’s tower and going back to his building.

the steps up to the second floor make his legs burn, and the walk down the hallway to his room feels like it takes forever.

seventh door out of nine on the right. his room. he opens it and enters.

he takes something he can’t see out of his pocket and puts it in a drawer that contains nothing.

after that,

he doesn’t think.

he doesn’t think.

he doesn’t think.

he only starts doing that again when, so many days later, he sees a familiar face.

red hair, dark brown eyes. she passes across his vision like a ghost.

he saw her, somewhere, once. he can’t remember her name.

he stops thinking again soon after.

time blends together in his brain. nothing is stored in his long term memory. he prays, eats, works, sleeps. always, always, every day. it’s all that he was, all that he is, and all that he will ever be.

he’s a good citizen. he’s the best citizen.

his brain is neon. his body is neon. 

he is neon. 

the time that passes could be a few days or a few months. he doesn’t bother to keep track, doesn’t have it within him to even try to. whatever nico and lisden had done, it removed all of his autonomy, all of his will, all of his thought, everything that was his own. 

all that remained was vialism. 

all that remained was nothing but the ability to follow routine. 

he follows the core tenets to the letter. he can’t do anything else. 

something new breaks within him one day, when he wakes up too early. 

he lies in bed and stares at the ceiling, brain empty except for the buzzing of neon. the vials in the center of his room add to it, but instead of working together they’re separate entities, separate concepts, separate thoughts. 

the buzzing in his head, he realizes, isn’t neon. it’s static. it’s thought trying to force its way through the cleansing. it’s his own internal voice struggling to not be overwritten. 

he’s overwhelmed by the revelation, and at the same time he’s fearful. 

he just wants to be good. 

contrary thoughts aren’t good. 

having any thought of your own at all was going against the bishops and everything they strived to teach. 

he tries to slip back into the unthinking void, but he can’t. there’s a thread of himself that stays connected to his senses. a deep, buried part of him doesn’t want to go. somehow, something in his brain hadn’t been thoroughly cleansed, and it was holding on to awareness. 

he desperately wishes it wasn’t. 

he just wants to be good and obedient. he’d been doing that. he’d been doing so good. 

typical of his own brain to run everything. 

~~how is tha~~ no no no no no. 

he can’t let himself think at all. thinking leads to new ideas leads to contrary thought leads to pushing against the bishops and their ideas. he’s never done anything bad. he’s never escaped. he doesn’t have an empty drawer that has objects in it whenever he touches the bottom. 

he is good. 

he’s always been good. 

~~has he?~~

stop.

the knock on his door comes, and he exits for worship. the other citizens of dema have the same blank look on their faces. all compliant, all obedient. everything that he’d been for the last period of time.

not knowing how long it had been concerned him. he likes knowing time, likes knowing hours and days and weeks, likes knowing how long he’s been doing something for. now, he doesn’t know any of those things. now, he has no idea. it scares him.

worship helps him to not think again. 

sometimes, he can register that he’s moving from place to place. all of his actions are automatic. he doesn’t speak to anyone.

worship, eat, work, sleep.

worship, eat, work, sleep.

worship, eat, work, sleep.

always. forever. over and over.

not forever.

“franklin, since you’re a model citizen, why don’t you show our newcomer around? andre is overcrowded, so he’s moving here.” nico is speaking to him.

the neon clears out of his eyes enough to see nico standing there, an arm around a person that he doesn’t recognize. short brown hair, brown eyes that stare at the ground.

“his name is walter.” nico’s still speaking. “his room is in your building, fifth floor, second door on the left. his work is in the room across from your own.”

he nods. “i’d be happy to do this task.” it’s the first time he’s used his voice.

“show him to mealtime.” nico removes his arm from walter and steps away. “i trust that this will be easy for you.”

he nods again, and nico leaves.

the tension across walter’s body relaxes as soon as nico stops touching him. “hello.” his voice is quiet.

“mealtime is this way.” he turns and starts walking. 

he only looks back once to see walter following him, a strange sadness in his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> owo


	17. when i fail you'll still be here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh oh

they sit across from each other at mealtime.

walter keeps looking at him with an expression he doesn’t know how to name. several times, he almost starts to speak, but then seems to decide better of it.

at the end of mealtime, they both stand up. walter follows him exactly, matching his actions. they deposit their plates in the designated container, then exit and walk to the work building.

the set of stairs up to the fourth floor go by quickly. he walks to the door of his work, then turns to face the one across from it. “that’s where you’ll work. meet me here after, and i’ll show you to your room.”

“thank you.” walter’s voice is very quiet.

he nods, then turns and enters his door.

at some point, he realizes, the person he works with had changed. while he hadn’t been thinking, jill had been switched out for a man with black hair. edward, he remembers.

he sinks himself into his work and tries not to think too much about walter.

~~he’s familiar. he knew him once.~~

he tries not to think about that.

 ~~he does think about it, though,~~ and he hates it.

after his work, he meets walter in the hallway. he doesn’t say anything, just starts walking.

walter, of course, follows.

he leads walter to one of the two buildings full of rooms. he fights his automatic reactions long enough to lead walter up to his room.

he turns to leave, but walter grabs his wrist.

“stay.”

he tilts his head. “what?”

“please.”

“why?” he looks down the hall. there’s still people filtering into their rooms. anyone could hear or see them and report them.

“i…” walter shakes his head and lets go. “nevermind.”

he nods, and then turns and heads down the stairs.

as he enters his room, he realizes his hands are shaking.

~~how can he know walter? walter is from andre. there’s no way he ever could have seen him before.~~

the possibility that nico was lying strikes him. 

he pushes the thought away fast. there’s no way nico would do that. nico is trustworthy, and benevolent, and good. nico would never lie. 

sleep comes easy, and the vials in the center of his room fill his ears and eyes again.

not thinking is easy. he passes walter a few times, but they don’t acknowledge each other. he barely even processes the fact that walter stares at him every time they’re in proximity.

neon fills all of his senses, and he doesn’t exist at all. 

thought and existence come back to him in the showers when a hand is placed on his shoulder.

he’s waiting for an empty stall, and someone comes up behind him and touches him. he doesn’t startle, just looks behind him to see walter.

“i need to talk to you.” walter’s voice is quiet.

“why?” he doesn’t understand.

“it’s really important.”

“i don’t know you.”

walter’s face falls. “you do, though.”

“i showed you around. that doesn’t count as knowing you.”

a shower stall opens up. he goes and enters it, and turns to shut the door only to see walter slip in behind him.

“you’re going to get us in trouble.” he hisses, keeping his voice low. “what are you doing?”

walter keeps the same quiet tone. “i’m trying to talk to you.” 

“this is not the way to do it!”

“you won’t talk to me.”

“it would break routine!” he’s shaking again. “look, just let me shower. i’ll come up to your room after. deal?”

“deal.” walter nods. “you better keep your word.” he exits the stall.

the cold water doesn’t help with his shaking. it doesn’t make him feel clean, either. in fact, he feels like more dirt has been layered onto his skin.

after his shower, he dresses in clean clothes and goes to walter’s room.

anxiety settles in him as he stands outside the door. he knocks once, quietly. there’s no one else in the hallway. 

the door opens just enough for him to slip inside. after a second of hesitation, he enters. 

walter shuts the door quietly. “i didn’t think you’d actually come.”

“i said i would.”

“you could’ve easily lied to me.”

“i didn’t.”

“you didn’t.”

“what did you want to discuss?” his vision is starting to tunnel with white. the vials in the center of walter’s room mock him and remind him that he shouldn’t be here, that he has no reason to be here. 

walter takes a moment to respond. his hands are shaking too. “you said you don’t know me, but you do.”

 ~~he does.~~ “i… i just feel like i should, but i never met you before you came over from andre.”

“i’m not from andre. people don’t change bishops. it doesn’t get overcrowded here.”

“i don’t understand.”

“you were thinking about it too, right? that nico lied?”

 ~~he was.~~ “i don’t understand.”

walter grabs his upper arms. “i’m from outside. i remember things. nico is not as good at cleansing as he wants to be.”

his hands raise to grip walter’s forearms, as if to push off the touch. he doesn’t move beyond that. “i…”

“don’t understand. right.” walter lets go. he doesn’t, keeping his hold on walter’s arms. 

“i want to understand, though.” the neon has almost taken over his vision. “i… i…”

he hears walter swear and say a name that might be his own. he feels himself collapse onto the ground. 

then, he doesn’t hear or feel anything. 

his awareness comes back very slowly. the white neon clears from his vision to expose a room lit by red vials. 

a memory tries to flash across his psyche, but something stops it.

he realizes he’s kneeling, eyes focused on the floor in front of him. he realizes his hands are tied behind his back and his legs are shackled to the floor. he realizes he can’t move anything except his head. 

he looks up. 

“ah, good, you’re awake.”

nico is standing in front of him, fifteen feet away. walter is there too, dressed in red and on his knees in front of nico, his back against nico’s red, red robes. nico has a tight grip on his throat, and walter looks so, so scared. 

“so, franklin.” nico’s face twists into what would be a smile on anyone else. “you’re going to tell me everything you know about walter, or else this will end very, very badly for him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh dear


	18. the difference between blood and water these days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oooo, capital letters

his words get stuck in his throat. 

“well?” nico’s hand tightens. walter gasps for air. “i don’t have all day.”

“i feel like i know him more than i do.” he doesn’t know what else to say but the truth. “he’s… he’s someone important to me.”

“how important?” nico’s hand around walter’s throat is as threatening as a knife, if not even more. 

he struggles to remember, but comes up with nothing. 

“tell. me.”

“i don’t remember!”

“don’t lie to me.” nico cuts off walter’s air. 

“i don’t remember, i swear i’m telling the truth, i-”

“you don’t have anything to remember.” nico growls. “you don’t know. say it.”

“i don’t know.” pain sears through his chest. it’s all internal, all related to the words that he didn't want to believe were true.

“good boy.” nico lets walter breathe again. “again.”

“i don’t know him.”

“you only showed him to his places. lots of people do that for others, when assignments are changed.”

“i only showed him to his places.”

“please.” walter gasps. “please, don’t-”

“shh.” the simple noise carries so much aggression. “franklin and i are talking.”

silence fills the red space. it’s interrupted by choked sounds from walter that takes him a moment to recognize as sobs. 

“franklin.” nico says after a moment. he seems to delight in walter’s crying. “you don’t feel anything for him.”

“i don’t feel anything for him.” he pushes his own sobs down his throat.

“good.” nico produces a small vial from somewhere beneath his robes. “keep that in mind.”

“i don’t feel anything for him.” he repeats. he lets the idea take hold of his brain. 

nico presses the vial against walter’s forehead. neon slowly begins to fill it. 

walter starts screaming. 

nico doesn’t bother to stop the sound, just lets it echo around the room. he starts slowly dragging the vial down the side of walter’s face. 

“stop.” he mumbles. then he’s shouting. “stop! stop hurting him!”

“you don’t feel anything for him.” nico’s voice is cold. 

“i can’t let you-”

“say it!”

“i don’t feel anything for him! stop hurting him now, please-”

“believe it!”

walter stops screaming. there’s an empty, blank look in his eyes. 

“i…” he stares at the glow still filling the vial. it buzzes loudly. he lets the noise fill him. “i don’t feel anything for him.”

“again.”

“i don’t feel anything for him.”

“again.”

“i don’t feel anything for him.”

“good boy.”

walter stops breathing. 

nico pulls the vial away and tucks it somewhere within his robes. he lets go of walter’s throat and lets the body fall to the floor. 

he doesn’t feel anything for walter. 

~~not walter. josh.~~

“you did good, franklin.” nico steps towards him. “i'm proud of you.”

he stares at josh’s body. 

“i’m sorry, but i had to do that. it was the only way.” nico bends down and unties his arms. 

~~josh is dead.~~

his legs are freed. 

nico holds out a hand. 

he takes it and stands. 

~~josh is dead.~~

~~josh is dead.~~

josh is dead. 

~~no.~~

no. 

no. 

NO. 

“franklin?” nico looks concerned for once. “what’s wrong?”

“he’s dead.”

“you don’t feel anything for him.”

“he’s dead and you killed him.”

“franklin.” nico sounds so, so angry and calm. “repeat after me. i don’t feel anything for him.”

“no.” he feels defiant. it’s the first time.

“i said, repeat-”

“i want josh.”

“franklin-”

“I WANT JOSH TO BE ALIVE.”

everything twists and shatters. the whole of reality warps and crumbles around him, and then he’s standing in front of a bathroom sink. 

there’s tears streaming down his face, and his throat is raw from crying. he wants to scream, to break the mirror, to make his knuckles bloody and his hand broken. 

he lands on screaming, and it twists into a sob halfway through. he knows deep down that breaking things won’t help, but god does he want to. 

he can’t remember why he’s having this breakdown. it came on suddenly while he was in the middle of producing morph. everything in his head had started screaming and his entire mind had been suddenly devoted to sobbing. 

he’d managed to get to the bathroom, somehow, and vaguely remembers throwing up. 

was jenna home?

no, she wasn’t. she’d told him before she left that she was hanging out with friends and would be home at five. 

he takes out his phone and squints at the time on it. 3:48. 

another sob wells up in his throat, and then he’s crying hard again. he can’t deal with this alone. 

josh. 

no, josh was probably busy. 

when had they last spoken, even over text? he couldn’t remember. 

he fumbles with his phone, tapping several times before getting his contacts open and calling josh. 

he can’t quite breathe as the phone rings. any air that makes its way into his lungs immediately being expelled with sobs. 

josh picks up on the second ring. “tyler?” the concern in his voice is overwhelming.

he starts crying harder. 

“tyler, hey, it’s okay.” josh speaks like he’s trying to reach through the connection and hug him. “what’s happening?”

“i… i don’t know, i just…” he’s struggling to speak through his tears. “i was just working and then i started freaking out for no reason and jenna isn’t home and… and…” he can’t stop crying. “i’m sorry this is the first time we’ve talked in a while and i’m sorry i-”

“hey, hey, it’s okay.” josh is gentle. “let’s talk through this. deep breaths.”

he struggles to breathe in. he can hear josh breathing slow on the line, and he tries to match that. he’s mostly successful. tears are still making their way down his cheeks, but at least he feels like he can breathe.

“usually there’s a reason you freak out like that.” josh knows him so, so well. “can you talk about it?”

he grabs a tissue and blows his nose. breathing becomes a lot easier. “i was working on morph. it’s been hard. and i just…” thinking about it makes him want to cry again. “we haven’t talked in a while.”

“do you want me to come visit?”

“yes. please. i miss you. i…”

“did you freak out because you were worried about me?”

“yes.”

josh sounds so, so, so gentle. “oh, tyler. it’ll be okay. let me just book a flight, and i’ll be there in a couple days, okay? i’m safe, i promise.”

“i love you.”

josh’s smile is audible when he speaks. “i love you too.”

his eyes open to his room in dema.

something feels just slightly different.

he doesn’t think about his dream. he doesn’t think about the world breaking. he doesn’t think about what nico did.

~~he’s lying. he’s thinking about it.~~

he gets up off his cot and changes his clothes. the vials outside are beginning to brighten and leak their light into his room.

the knock on his door summoning him to worship comes, and he follows the people from his floor down the stairs and to that building.

he sits down in a pew in the back, and watches the rest of the people in his district file in.

a familiar face passes by him, and he freezes.

walter.

josh.


	19. take them on my own

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for delayed update. this is the last full chapter i have written

he can’t concentrate, and he knows that nico must’ve noticed. he keeps making mistakes, keeps messing up his motions and stumbling over his words.

how was josh alive? he’d seen him die. he’d seen him unmoving, unbreathing, so cold and still on the floor of that red-lit room. he’d seen nico cleanse the life out of him.

after worship, he goes to mealtime. he’s not stopped by nico or a chosen. he collects his plate and sits at a small, empty table.

josh sits next to him. “hi.”

“hi.” he doesn’t want to eat.

“you…” josh shudders. “was that real?”

“what?”

“me dying.”

he nods. he doesn’t want to voice it. it would make it far too real.

josh runs a hand through his hair. it’s starting to grow back out into what it was when they first met.

~~he’s remembering things again. the cleansing never seems to stick.~~

“it was terrible.” josh isn’t eating either.

“it was.” 

“we should escape again.”

he nods. “during the day?”

“i know a way out that isn’t through the necropolis.”

“should we try and take…” he struggles to remember her name. “debby?”

josh nods vigorously. “we need to.”

“how will we know where she is?”

“i… i don’t know.” josh rubs a hand across his face. “maybe if we get to keons i’ll feel drawn to her?”

he tilts his head. “i never told you she was from keons.”

a pause. 

“what the hell.” josh rubs his eyes hard. “how did i know that?”

silence falls between the two of them. the room is still filled with the conversation of the other citizens.

at the end of mealtime, they exit quickly and quietly. 

“i think i’ll know where she is.” josh murmurs. “let’s get her out after work, just as sleeptime starts. i know a way out underneath dema, but it takes a lot longer.”

“okay.” he’s nervous and excited all at the same time. 

they walk to their work side by side. 

he’s distracted while he works, thinking about what’s going to happen within the next few hours. he and josh are going to find debby, and then they’re going to leave. 

has he escaped before?

maybe. 

he and josh leave their work at the same time. he wants to take josh’s hand, just to make sure that they don’t get split up, but it would be too obvious. citizens aren’t allowed to touch each other. 

it’s easy to slip through the crowds of other districts. they make sure not to lose each other.

once they reach keons, josh scans the buildings. he wordlessly enters one.

the building is one full of rooms. the two of them ascend the stairs, acting like they belong there. none of the citizens take notice of them.

fifth floor, fifth door on the left. josh stands outside it and knocks gently.

debby opens the door.

“we’re leaving.” josh whispers. “come with us?”

her eyes flicker over josh, then over him. recognition blooms in her expression.

“okay.” she says, stepping out of her room and closing the door.

the three go back down the stairs quickly. the crowd of people is beginning to diminish. soon it’ll be obvious that they’re very much breaking routine.

“this way. there’s doors like this in every district.” josh leads him and debby to a door tucked in the back of one of the keons buildings. he opens it and exposes a set of stairs that lean down into the darkness.

“we don’t have torches.” debby says. 

“we’ll be okay. if we’re lucky, someone will be in there.”

“you guys raid dema?”

“we kind of have to.”

josh starts down the stairs. debby follows him.

he shuts the door behind them, cutting off the artificial vial light.

debby reaches back and takes his hand, and they make a chain down the dark tunnel. josh leads them forward through the pitch black.

“i don’t like the dark.” he mumbles. it sounds loud in the quiet space.

“it’ll be okay. you’ll be okay.” josh is ever-comforting. “if we talk will that help?”

“i’d like to talk too.” debby adds. “it’s a little freaky down here.”

“do you have dreams?” josh asks. “dreams about outside of dema, ones that you can’t quite explain?”

“i do.” she speaks softly, as if the bishops could still hear her. “they’re mostly short flashes, though, and i don’t understand them.”

“they’re still something though, right?”

“yeah.”

“we have dreams too.” he offers. “so does jenna.”

josh hums in agreement. 

“jenna…” debby thinks for a moment. “i feel like i should know a jenna.”

“you’ll know her for sure when you meet her.” he can’t wait to see jenna again, can’t wait to see her blue, blue eyes and feel her soft touch.

there’s a pause in their talking. he doesn’t like the darkness and the silence. it suffocates his ears and eyes and reminds him too much of the unthinking neon. at least it’s dark instead of  
light. 

“how did you know where i was?” debby asks. 

“i don’t know.” josh sounds just slightly confused. “i just followed what i felt.”

“i’ve never seen you before.”

“i haven’t seen you before either.”

“that’s an issue we’ve been having. knowing stuff that we’ve never experienced before.”

“i don't like it.” he says. “i like knowing everything that’s in my brain came from me.”

“maybe it has something to do with the dreams?” josh offers. 

“that would make sense.”

silence again. 

he hates the silence.

dema isn’t quiet, it’s always filled with the harsh buzzing of neon. trench isn’t quiet, it’s filled with the sounds of existence and crackling fire. 

this tunnel is far too quiet. 

 

“just keep moving.” josh beings to murmur. “just keep moving, keep going, we’ll get there. soon, i promise soon.”

through their linked hands, he can feel debby shaking.

the escape is always the worst part of going from dema to trench. the anxiety thrums in all three of them. josh’s nervous assurances are a steady stream.

they’re the only thing keeping him going.

the pressing darkness is terrifying.

debby’s hand is tight on his, as if afraid she’s going to lose him in the dark. he can only assume that she’s holding tighter onto josh.

they all knew each other, before dema, but debby and josh knew each other better.

**Author's Note:**

> u can find me and my shenanigans on tumblr @[nonbinaryclancy](http://nonbinaryclancy.tumblr.com)


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